


DEEP RIVER

by dralafas



Series: The Way Home [2]
Category: Cyberpunk 2077 (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Conspiracy, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Explicit Language, F/M, Friendship, Memory Alteration, Memory Loss, Mystery, Post-Canon, Romance, True Love
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-28
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-13 18:53:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 30,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28908147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dralafas/pseuds/dralafas
Summary: After an accident, Takemura Goro forgets parts of his past. The former special forces member is demoted to a low-level security position at Arasaka Takamatsu and searches for his new normal. But when a woman who claims she used to know him appears in his life, he uncovers a conspiracy that forces him to question how far he will go for a memory.
Relationships: Goro Takemura & Female V, Goro Takemura & Original Female Character, Goro Takemura & V, Goro Takemura/Female V, Goro Takemura/V
Series: The Way Home [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2114373
Comments: 25
Kudos: 110





	1. prologue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, and welcome to the second part of V and Takemura’s journey! You should not need to read Lights on Low to enjoy this fic, but you may better understand some of Takemura’s motivations as the story progresses since that focuses solely on the development of their relationship.
> 
> This story takes place post-canon; so if you haven’t completed The Devil ending for the game, there are spoilers sprinkled throughout.

Her golden fingers trembled as she pushed the shard into its place without hesitation. She could not tell if the emotion swirling within her breast was anger or despair; the two always seemed so closely intertwined when it came to him. She stared down at the face of the man she admired and loved twice as much as he clung to her like a rejected child, helplessly grasping for acceptance from its mother. 

His eyes fluttered shut and he let out a breathy whine at the sensation. Inserting a shard created a tingling warmth on the scalp, as if a lover whispered gently into your ear. She hated the feeling; it always felt something closer to being violated than comforting. Her brother, on the other hand, had always yearned for any simulacrum of intimacy, chasing it in parts - in women, causes, beliefs - across Japan. But never at home. Not after he left for the first time, anyways.

She remembered the long, bygone days of summer. They never climbed trees nor felt tall grasses against their knees, but with the imagination only children could draw from the universe, they found their own joy in the sterile prison of the Arasaka compound. Days filled with endless tutors, formal dinners, and great expectations were interspersed with the mischief of a stolen bokken or a misplaced tea set.

Then it all changed, that one fateful day. He never told her exactly what happened, but he left home that very night without a goodbye. She had cried for days, scared and confused. As she grew she resented his absence and the chaos his rebellion brought to the family, to their father. Only later did she begin to understand her brother’s righteous fury, delayed by their father’s attempts to shield her from the truth.

It hurt to see him now. She’d seen him enraged, triumphant, vengeful - and even after decades of futilely fighting the system, she thought he would never give up. Now, he looked utterly defeated. It was such a foreign, unwelcome set to his features that she shook him without thinking, making sure that he was not dead.

He opened his eyes and she cupped his cheek, somehow knowing that it would be the last time she could grant him absolution. “Is this how it ends?” His voice cracked from the dryness in his throat, his normally smooth voice only a croak. He must have run a diagnostic on the inserted shard. “Hanako.”

“Yes, nii-san,” she murmured comfortingly, her hand now smoothing down his crown of jet-black hair. Of course it would be her to bring retribution to the wayward son. No matter how many years she tried to avoid it, she always knew it would come down to her. “Father will guide you well.”

“Please, let me die instead.” His plea cut into her heart so deep that she could swear she could feel it bleed, and she glanced down involuntarily at her chest to see if it was stained red. It was still covered in the unsullied white of her dress, only covered with the scent of sweat and gunpowder. The carnage in that once perfectly humid jungle-scape replayed in her mind. She steeled herself.

“Family comes first,” she reminded him harshly. Her voice was as even as it always was, but she could feel herself begin to lose herself bit by bit to the rage. “And you turned your back on our family.” 

You turned your back on me, she wanted to say.

His hand shot up to grip her wrist, his thumb caressing the exposed skin, and for a heartbeat, she panicked. She had ordered Oda to stand guard outside the room because this moment was too private, too familial; but her brother could still physically overpower her at any moment. How droll it would be for both father and daughter to fall to the same fate.

Her brother must have felt her tense, because he let her go one finger at a time and inched his hand away from her, dropping it back next to his limp limbs on the ground. Shame briefly washed over her. Fear was beneath her; her brother may have murdered their father, but she was always his weakness. “One day you will realize that all I ever did was for our family. And when you do, I hope you do not regret this.” The words should have sounded like a threat, but her brother was tired. He could only muster resignation. “You happily send me to a fate worse than death.”

If she had any more tears to shed for him, she knew those words would have heralded their arrival. “Not happily, nii-san. Never happily.”

“And yet the end result is the same.”

“Yes,” she admitted in a broken whisper. She clutched him tighter, just for a moment. There was nothing else left to say.

“Goodbye, Hanako.” His dark eyes gazed into hers and she saw no fear. He had never accepted the Arasaka cybernetics with their characteristic blue-grey hue. She was so proud of him then, her fearless, principled brother. He was brave enough to do what she never could.

It was time. Her cybernetic eyes heated up as she initiated the hack against his system, slowly frying every synapse in his neural network. He slipped off of her lap then, screaming in intense pain as she destroyed him piece by piece. He writhed on the floor like the koi on his well-pressed dress shirt, like a fish out of water. She continued through his agony, numb with grief.

A door opened in the distance, and she threw up her arm as a signal for the intruder to stop. The sound of footsteps ceased immediately. When her brother finally stilled, embraced by the merciful hands of death, she looked up to see Takemura standing in the doorway like Judgement himself, the light from the hallway leaking into the room and shrouding him in darkness.

“Hanako-sama,” she heard him breathe out in shock. He sounded more rattled than she had ever heard him. “Did he harm you? What happened?”

Her first thought that Takemura was actually more concerned about the thief that had scuttled away than the tragedy unfolding in front of him, and for a moment, she wanted to reach out and end his pitiful life. But she forced her anger to recede, knowing that she was being unkind. Takemura was what her father made him, wrapping himself in honor and codes to justify the way he was broken. There was no use getting worked up over her father’s favorite tool. It was like being upset at a sword for being sharp. She ignored him instead, kneeling next to the unmoving form of her brother as she waited in silence.

“Hanako-sama?” She heard Takemura edge closer cautiously, his heels connecting loudly to the floor.

Suddenly, her brother’s eyes shot open, bloodshot and wild, and he stared over her shoulder. “No. No, no, no!” He scrambled backwards, until his back hit the screen wall that displayed a map of the world, staring at Takemura like he was death come reaping. Dots representing cities with Arasaka towers blinked above him like fading stars. It was fitting, she mused, for her brother to be punished under their watchful gaze.

Hanako knew what her brother was really seeing, but Takemura stood rooted in place, paralyzed in his confusion. She kept her eyes on her brother, continuing her silence.

Her brother’s mouth twisted into a multitude of shapes, as if at war with himself. He contorted like a man possessed, his limbs twitching and shuddering as he fought against his internal assailant. In the end, he went slack for a moment before a chillingly familiar expression settled onto his face. He slowly staggered upwards onto his feet, swaying momentarily before he gained full control of his limbs. Despite her assault on the body, he pushed through the fatigue admirably, giving off the impression as if he was in the peak of health. His hands folded behind his back and his shoulders straightened. Yorinobu no longer stood before her, but another man entirely.

Takemura took in a sudden, sharp inhale, and she knew that he understood.

“My dearest daughter,” her father intoned with her brother’s voice, with his face. “You have done well.”

She bowed lowly to him. “Father.” She heard the low rumble of Takemura’s voice and the rustle of his clothes as he followed suit.

It is now, she thought as she clasped her hands in front of herself, staring down at the marble floors, that my heart is truly broken. Memories of halcyon summer days drifted through her mind once again. An outstretched hand to lift her up from the ground whenever she fell. A message in an encrypted channel on the net, encouraging her to stay the course and thrive where she could. A flickering light of hope in the almost all-encompassing darkness. She had grasped every memory from her seventy-nine years and crushed them all. A quick glance at her fingers did not reveal the blood that she expected to drip from her golden claws. What was family anymore, with her precious brother imprisoned within his own mind, his own father his jailor?

She closed her eyes and thought of the gilded peace their father promised her. No more hunger, no more fear. A beautiful world where no children need suffer like Sandayu once did. She held faith, and pushed all thoughts of her brother away. Her work had only just begun.

Goodbye, nii-san.


	2. prologue

“How are you feeling, Takemura-san?”

The doctor’s voice was soft and kind; despite that, Takemura Goro fidgeted on the uncomfortable plastic chair, somewhat unnerved. The room he sat in felt completely sterile - white walls, white furniture, white equipment. Even the hospital gown he wore was white. The only hint of color came from the swirl that represented the doctor’s face and the semi-transparent black clipboard that he held within his elderly hands.

Goro hated it here. Somehow, even with the size of the room and the tasteful decor, he felt like he was suffocating. It wasn’t a hangup from some kind of childhood trauma, he was sure. But something had happened in the past years that made him develop a deep aversion to the lifelessness of this room. Even the doctor didn’t seem alive, his visage obscured by a face-scrambler that hid all of his distinguishing facial features in an ever changing pattern. Takemura had heard a rumor that Arasaka began to use the technology after the last time a doctor was brutally murdered by an employee nearly a decade ago, but of course, he couldn’t verify. Personally, Takemura wasn’t sure how effective it was as a protective measure. After these past few years, he was certain he could identify the doctor by his small, wrinkled hands alone.

“I am well, Kinomoto-sensei,” Goro responded politely. It wasn’t the doctor’s fault that he hated everything about this process, Goro reasoned with himself. It was required for all Arasaka security forces - a twice yearly physical and mental evaluation to ensure that none of the guards were on the verge of a cyberpsychotic break. It was a loosely kept secret that some ten percent of the guards could not overcome the loss of self that came with replacing most of their body with cybernetic parts. He’d graduated from needing these exams, but ever since the incident a couple of years ago, he’d been roped back into having them as a requirement. He tried to tell himself he wasn’t resentful of their reinstatement.

Doctor Kinomoto wrote something on the clipboard in response to his words, and Takemura found some humor in the doctor’s stubbornness to not use a computer, especially since he relied on technology for almost everything else. He’d once asked the good doctor about his insistence on paper for record-keeping, and the old man had simply laughed. “Your secrets are safer on paper, Takemura-san,” Doctor Kinomoto had replied, amusement clear in his voice. “Trust me on that.”

The doctor flipped through pages of documents, making thoughtful and pleased noises along the way. Goro sat quietly, staring at his own hands as he waited for the doctor to finish. His Arasaka-provided cybernetics dotted the backs of his hands, covering his knuckles and replacing his bones. He flexed them slowly with a wonderment and a bit of shame. 

“As expected, your physical went perfectly. Your blood pressure, heart-rate, and other vitals look good. I’m glad you’re maintaining your physical fitness, even if it isn’t as exciting here as your previous assignment,” Doctor Kinomoto began conversationally, speaking at a slow, almost hypnotic cadence. “Let’s begin the mental assessment. Do you know what day it is, Takemura-san?”

“Today is January 14th, 2083,” Takemura replied automatically. He continued, preemptively answering the questions that he knew the doctor would ask. “Arasaka Saburo is the current head of Arasaka Corporation, I took my medicine this morning with my breakfast of natto and rice, and eight times eight is sixty-four.” 

“Good,” the doctor hummed, his voice full of mirth as he scratched down notes. “Remembering those questions is another good sign for your continued recovery. And the accident - have you regained any of your memory of the years between 2061 and 2081?”

Takemura flinched, his hands clenching. If he was honest with himself, this question was probably the beginning and the end of his hatred of this biannual evaluation process.

“No,” Takemura answered honestly, staring where he assumed the doctor’s eyes were hiding behind the scrambler. “I still cannot remember anything from the past twenty years.”

*****

Doctor Kinomoto sighed deeply after Takemura closed the door behind him, removing his glasses and cleaning them thoroughly before perching them back on his nose. He slowly crossed the room, his advanced years weighing on his slight, hunched form. Reaching the desk on the other side of the room, he opened a hidden drawer, pulling out white paper, an ancient looking fountain pen, and a well of ink. He wrote carefully with his new instruments, corroborating with his notes every once in a while, and waited for the ink to dry before crisply folding the papers in half. The hidden drawer was opened again, and the doctor deposited the writing implements and retrieved a large envelope and a short, green wax stick.

He examined the seal and smiled at the pheasant staring back at him.

*****

The chill of the cement floor bit into Takemura as he leaned against a wall, his legs sprawled out haphazardly before him. An open bottle of sake sat next to him as he took a deep drink of his cup, staring out into the bustling cityscape from his apartment balcony. He would never admit it out loud, but as he felt the alcohol rush through in his veins and the tell-tale red flush begin to gather on his cheeks, he admitted to himself that he definitely closer to drunk than sober. But after every one of these evaluations, he could not seem to help himself.

Even after two years, the current state of the world shocked him. His memory of Takamatsu in the 2050s was of a small, quiet port city that could not hold a candle to Tokyo. But now, every corner seemed to be lit up in neon lights and overcrowded, advertisements blinking on every available space. The city had grown more crowded, souls brushing shoulder to shoulder just to walk down the street. If Takamatsu had managed to grow so much in the past twenty or so years, he wondered what Tokyo had transformed into. Maybe he would go visit one day, he mulled acidly, when he was finally allowed to leave this city.

He was pleased to see that the efforts to rebuild Arasaka after the Fourth Corporate world had not collapsed in the years following his memories. The 2030s and 2040s had been perilous time in Arasaka history; he remembered the shame of wearing another company’s uniform when being deployed to other countries as a fresh-faced academy graduate in the 2040s. By the 2050s, he was able to wear the Arasaka uniform with pride - but a rot had began to grow from within after the death of Arasaka Kei. Factions had begun to split Arasaka apart, the Taka faction led by Arasaka Yorinobu sowing the most chaos. Takemura had never liked Yorinobu, a man who spat out the silver spoon he had been born with and then branded it as a cudgel. So, needless to say, it had been an unpleasant surprise to recover and see him as the head of Arasaka.

It was even more confusing to discover that it was actually Arasaka Saburo. Even more so to learn that Arasaka Saburo had been murdered in 2077 under a set of mysterious circumstances, and Arasaka Corporation had fallen into a disorder that could only have been rivaled by the days of the Fourth Corporate War. Months later, under even more questionable circumstances and a firefight that culminated in the deaths of almost all of the Arasaka Corporation board members, Yorinobu donated his body to Saburo. The Emperor seemed to have been reinvigorated with his son’s slightly more youthful blood, and Arasaka Corporation managed to yet again claw its way back to the top. Arasaka’s reach was growing even further throughout the world, with the rich and powerful flocking to the newly rolled out Relic program. Takemura tried not to think too hard on the implications of subverting mortality, only glad that Arasaka was continuing to keep Japan in relevance.

Takemura had Arasaka to thank for everything: his climb out of the slums of Chiba-11, his education, his survival after the incident. He must have served Arasaka well for the twenty years he could not remember, though he could find no evidence of any significant work that he did on the net or in Arasaka’s internal employee network. There was no other reason for Arasaka to spend the significant resources they must have spent to try to save him after the incident. Except maybe as a lab rat. Takemura took another large sip of his sake at that particularly disturbing thought.

He turned his thoughts inward, to himself, as he gazed at his reflection on the glass barrier of his balcony rails. Looking into the mirror was still a bit of a shock. His face was leaner, with fine wrinkles starting to appear around his eyes and mouth, all traces of baby fat gone from his features. Cybernetics he couldn’t remember receiving framed his cheeks and crossed the bridge of his nose. His hair had started to go gray at his temples. When taking into account his high level of fitness, he looked, surprisingly, his actual, physical age.

It was one of the few reasons that he believed the incredible story that Kinomoto-sensei had weaved for him. The world was full of ways to retain youth, but had very few means for accelerating its removal. His body proved that he was not in his thirties any longer, but his mind...

He gave up all pretense and set his cup down, grabbing the bottle and drinking it from the neck. He was loathe to admit it for fear of appearing ungrateful, but drunk in the privacy of his home he was able to admit that he was miserable here. Miserable in this tiny apartment in Takamatsu, with no friends nor family to speak of, with no higher purpose except to wander the halls of a building that had little to no chance of any excitement except the occasional dust-filled tweaker or overzealous protestor. Takemura was bored and filled with an inexplicable emptiness, and he had no way to alleviating the feeling. He was leashed by Arasaka, by his loyalty and his sense of honor, and he could not think of a creative way to free himself. He could not bring himself to leave Arasaka behind, to find another job, to move to another city and try to find a new life. He wasn’t sure if he would even be allowed to as a consequence of the incident.

He drank the rest of the bottle, drowning himself in more alcohol and healthy dose of self pity before he stumbled into bed to pass out in an alcohol-induced slumber. 

*****

_Good morning, this is Erica from NHK News._

_This morning, at 5:00 AM, there was a thirty minute power outage that affected parts of Shimanto-cho. A breaker failed, causing a transformer to explode. Workers were on the scene immediately and quickly resolved the issue._

_Arasaka Corporation apologizes deeply for the inconvenience, and does not anticipate any further interruptions in service._

*****

Takemura did not dream often, but when he did it was always a nightmare. This night’s feature involved a riot of colors and sounds, punctuated by the glowing eyes of a bakeneko and a pair of strangling hands.

Goro had gasped awake and found himself covered in sweat and twisted within his bedsheets. He groaned and brought his hand to cover his face, his head pounding from his hangover. Images from the dream faded from his memory as he shook off the mantle of sleep and focused on taking long, deep breaths to force his heart rate to go down. He counted down from twenty, ignoring the agony of his headache.

He groaned and sat up, feeling heavy and uncoordinated, before a sudden feeling of dread ran through him. His room was awfully well lit for not having any lights on. He tilted his head up to look out the floor-to-ceiling windows of his balcony, and blinked once at the sight of the sun hanging high in the sky. He glanced over to the digital panel on the wall and saw the time blinking lazily at him, sighing before doing a double take.

Takemura was late. He was never late.

He shot up out of his bed and scrambled to the bathroom, performing his morning ablutions with a speed that he was sure he hadn’t accomplished since his paramilitary days. He shrugged on his uniform and dashed out the door, and spent the rest of his morning running. Running to the bus stop, running to the train, and then running to the Arasaka office. He rushed through security, giving a half-hearted nod of acknowledgment to his bewildered coworkers manning the gates, and by some miracle had almost managed to make it to his shift roll-call on time before he heard something almost as disturbing as his nightmares.

“Takemura-san?” A familiar, high-pitched, sing-song voice called out from across the hall, and Takemura resisted the urge to groan as he stopped to look back. He watched a woman with long pink hair jog towards him and then stop a pace away, her hands falling to her knees as she gasped for breath. “Takemura-san! I’m so glad I found you.”

“Kurosaki-san,” Takemura replied with half concern and half exasperation, and cursed his luck. He glanced longingly at the black door with the words “Security Only” written in large white letters just a couple of steps away, and resisted exhaling a deep sigh before fully facing the woman. “What now?”

Kurosaki-san, otherwise known as Kurosaki Tomoyo, was one of the least effective corpos that Takemura had ever had the misfortune of meeting. She was constantly late, ran into almost everything, and to top it off had the directional ability of a deaf-blind cat dropped into a stone maze (which, honestly, was most likely offensive to the cats). If he thought about it, he had no idea why anyone would put up with her airheaded, vapid personality, and especially not for the nearly three months she’d survived Arasaka so far.

To top it off, he had a sneaking suspicion that the pink-haired monster was purposefully finding him within the building - he had no idea how he kept running into her almost once a week. There were so many people within Arasaka, even in a smaller city like Takamatsu, that he rarely saw the same person once a month, much less at the frequency he saw Kurosaki.

Tomoyo's cybernetic-enhanced eyes glowed an almost eerie sea green as she pouted. She crossed her arms and stepped closer, turning up her face to him. Takemura noted her distinctly hafu features, with hints of an aquiline nose and and strong cheekbones to accompany her monolid eyes. He watched her quivering lip impassively. “Takemura-san! You’re so mean to me, you know that?”

“I am running late for rotation,” Takemura replied dryly, digging deep into his well of patience and finding himself lacking. “Tell me what is wrong.” He glared at Tomoyo when she opened her mouth. “Calmly, Kurosaki-san.”

He steadfastly endured another pout before she stood up straight, brushing imaginary dust off of her way-too-expensive gold-colored skirt. She delicately cleared her throat. “I need your help with my office. I, um,” Tomoyo flushed fiercely, her face turning into something reminiscent of a tomato. “Imayhavelockedmyselfoutagain.”

Takemura stared at her for a moment, processing her request with an unprecedented amount of incredulity, before turning on his heel and walking towards the safety of his brothers and sisters-in-security and away from forgetful, blushing menaces.

“Wait! Takemura-san!” A small hand grabbed his bicep and he turned, ready to scowl at Kurosaki for daring to lay a hand on him, when he suddenly felt light headed and dizzy. Day had turned into night, and Tomoyo was no longer Tomoyo, but a dark haired woman with eyes as green as the deepest forests.

_“Goro,” the mysterious woman cried out, one of her hands an iron vice on his bicep. There was blood smeared all over her face and he couldn’t stand it, he was going to disembowel every fucking shit-stain that had dared to hurt her. She continued shouting at him in English. “Hey! Goro, calm down, I’m fine. I’m fine! We gotta delta the fuck out of here, not run some gonk Rambo play -”_

“Takemura-san?” Tomoyo asked, confused, her head tilted as she fuzzed back into view, her features taking over the woman’s that had been superimposed over hers. “Hey, Takemura-san? You in there?”

Takemura blinked, shaking his head lightly. “Uh - “ he managed to say dumbly, his head pounding as the background of a dirty warehouse disappeared from his mind’s eye. He shook his head vigorously again, trying to shake the rest of the image from his head by force. “What did you say, Kurosaki-san?”

Tomoyo squinted her eyes and considered Takemura for a second. Her eyes widened almost imperceptibly, as if she had a sudden realization, but the look was gone before he could properly process it. “I um - I asked you to help me unlock my office. But - are you okay? You look kind of...”

More images began to fly through his head quickly and without context, and he stumbled backwards, away from Tomoyo until his back hit the wall, sliding down until he was sitting on the ground. His breaths came in fast as he gasped, a torrent of scenes and voices flowing over him and overwhelming all of his senses. The world around him seemed to glitch around the images, an imperfect meld of reality and whatever artifacts this net runner attack - it had to be a net runner attack - was creating in his brain.

_”I was just trying to connect to you like a goddamned human being,” the woman grunted as she looked out the window, holding herself like she was wounded. He glanced over, puzzled by her reaction, and could only see the dark halo of her hair. “Sometimes an ‘are you okay’ is just an ‘are you okay’. Don’t gotta be a fuckin’ asshole about it.”_

_She was a smiling face on a video comm, her nose almost touching the camera. Nervousness fluttered into his stomach like butterflies at her open expression, and he pushed down the warmth that threatened to blossom on his cheeks. “That was something, wasn’t it? How about you, though? You doing okay?”_

_”Hey, you okay over there?” Her voice was warped with a buzz over the voice-only comm, and he could hear the sound of metal-against-metal as she reloaded her gun. He breathed heavily as he hid behind cover, waiting for an opening, soaking in the sound of her voice. “Not gonna lie, it’s getting real fuckin’ cozy over here, and it wouldn’t kill these gonks to take a damn shower. Could use a distraction any day now.”_

_“Hi,” she said shyly, smiling up at him as they laid entangled in bed. The tension drained from his body as he admired the shape of her mouth and the crinkle of her eyes, and he reached out to touch her cheek. She nuzzled his hand and he felt his heart melt. “I, um - I was so mad I forgot to ask earlier. How are you? Are you okay?”_

Takemura groaned, holding his head in his hands and trying keep himself tethered to reality until suddenly, everything went completely dark. His last thought was a name.

_Valerie._

*****

When Takemura opened his eyes, he found himself on his back in the infirmary. He grunted and slowly sat up, his head still swimming. He turned to his left and found Tomoyo dozing in an uncomfortable position on a plastic seat next to him. He swung his legs over the bed and grabbed a blanket, leaning over and gently settling it over her shoulders. She mumbled softly in her sleep and snuggled into the scratchy cloth.

The door to the room swooshed open nearly silently, and Doctor Kinomoto - at least, Takemura assumed it was based on his hands and clipboard - limped in. “You’re awake.”

Ah, that voice. Definitely Kinomoto-sensei. “Yes. What happened to me?” Goro asked in a hushed voice, glancing briefly at Kurosaki.

“Maybe we shouldn’t talk about this with someone else in the room,” Doctor Kinomoto began, collapsing into the closest rolling chair at the first opportunity. He scooted towards Goro. “Your privacy is important.”

“Leave her,” Goro muttered, shaking his head before training his eyes on the doctor. Tomoyo hadn’t moved except for the light rise and fall of her chest since he put the blanket on her. She seemed to be deeply asleep and completely dead to the world. “There’s no need to wake her. Please, tell me - what happened?”

“If you insist,” Doctor Kinomoto acquiesced, the blur seeming to concentrate on the sleeping woman for a beat too long before focusing on Takemura. “You passed out. Kurosaki-san reported that you started staring into space and then fell over.” The doctor sighed deeply, his hands resting heavily on his clipboard as the plastic dug into his thighs. “She screamed like you had been murdered. It was all a bit dramatic, to be honest. But, I suppose for a young man like yourself it must be flattering, if a bit old fashioned. She is quite beautiful.”

Takemura was too dignified a man to sputter, but he felt like he was close to doing so. Confusion and anger rose up in his chest at the doctor’s insinuation. What in the hells was the man going on about? What ended up coming out of Goro’s mouth was a choked sounding: “Flattering?”

The amusement that tinged the doctor’s voice was similar to when he asked him about his penchant for hand writing. “Ah. I’ll leave that as an exercise to the reader.” He quickly changed tack and scooted a little closer to Takemura, removing the stethoscope from his neck and pressing the cold metal underneath Takemura’s shirt. He was quiet for a minute before sitting back. “Your heart rate is slightly elevated, but nothing to be concerned about. Kurosaki-san said you said a name before you went unconscious, but she couldn’t remember exactly what it was. Do you remember?”

Takemura thought hard about the moments before he collapsed, but only found a void. “I was running late because I overslept. I ran into Kurosaki-san and... now I am here. No, I do not remember.”

Doctor Kinomoto made a thoughtful sound. “Did you eat breakfast?”

Goro blinked, trying to parse what at first appeared to be a non sequitur. “No. I was running late, I did not have time. I - ah.”

“I’m guessing you’ve come to the same conclusion that I have, Takemura-san. If I was a betting man, I would wager that if I checked your blood pressure it would be all over the place right now. You cannot forget to eat breakfast and take your medicine, or you will have more fainting spells like this one,” the doctor scolded, writing down notes on his clipboard. “I’ll get a nurse to find some breakfast for you, but until then, take this.”

Doctor Kinomoto held out a large, green pill in his gnarled hands. Takemura carefully extracted it from the doctor’s fingers and popped it into his mouth, his throat working as he easily swallowed it without any water.

“Rest for a little bit,” the doctor ordered, shaking his head at what Takemura assumed was exasperation at the carelessness of middle-aged-but-mentally-young men. “You’ve had a rough morning. I’ll let your manager know what’s going on, if she hasn’t heard from the gossip already.”

“Thank you, Kinomoto-sensei,” Goro bowed his head slightly before laying back on the bed. When he heard the doctor limp out of the room with the tell-tale swoosh of the door, he shifted his head on the pillow to stare at Tomoyo with a considering eye. 

She continued to breathe softly, almost motionless in the tiny plastic chair, oblivious to the world.

“Wake up,” Takemura demanded.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The idea of Takemura in a “customer-facing” role cracks me up. Poor man is too blunt for his own good.


	3. play ball

“Wake up,” Takemura demanded again when Tomoyo did not stir.

Tomoyo continued to sleep peacefully, her face scrunching cutely for a moment from the sound of his voice before settling back to utter serenity. Her pink hair flowed around her like a waterfall of cherry blossoms, her full lips turned up gently into an almost smile. She was the perfect picture of sleep as she snuggled even further into the hospital blanket, her expression gentle and kind, like the statues of the Virgin Mary that he saw in his textbooks as a teenager.

“Stop pretending to be asleep and wake up,” Goro hissed at her sleeping form. When she continued to be unresponsive, he pulled himself into a sitting position and picked up his pillow, considering its heft for a moment before hurling roughly it at her face.

Kurosaki squawked when the pillow made hard contact with her face, nearly jumping out of her skin, and she sputtered at him as her eyes shot wide open. “T-Takemura-san! That was uncalled for!”

“You were awake the entire time,” Takemura accused, crossing his arms as he stared her down with what he felt was his best, well-practiced glare. “Why?”

Something hard and determined flashed through Tomoyo’s eyes for an instant before it disappeared behind a bright smile, and Goro stiffened in surprise. Kurosaki quickly rearranged her mussed hair with a well-practiced hand and slowly crossed her legs as she leaned forward. He focused briefly on the shiny, gold heel that dangled from her dainty foot before raising an eyebrow at her overly distressed expression. “I was just so, so worried about you, Takemura-san! It’s not often a man like you falls over like he’s about to die.”

Takemura sighed at her words, tilting his head up to the ceiling in askance as he counted to ten. When he finished counting, he frowned at her. “Does this work on anyone?”

Tomoyo continued to smile with rows of shiny, beautiful, white teeth, her eyes crinkling warmly as she beamed at him. “What do you mean?”

“The unbelievable dumb bimbo act,” Takemura answered lightly, and he braced himself, watching carefully for her reaction.

He wasn’t disappointed. Kurosaki gasped dramatically, her eyes widening as her mouth dropped open in shock. “Dumb - dumb bimbo - what? How dare you, Takemura-san!” She threw the blanket on the ground and shot up from her seat, stalking over to him in two steps as her open palm flew across his face. He quickly brought a hand to his cheek, feeling the sting of the blow as he stared up impassively at the raging woman. “How dare you! I sat here for hours worried about you, and - and this is how you treat me?” Tears sprung into the corners of her eyes and her lip trembled. “I can’t believe you. No wonder everyone says you’re a jerk!” She dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief she materialized out of a tiny purse as she stomped out of the room, blubbering loudly.

Takemura brought his hand down from his reddening cheek, and stared at the small piece of paper that sat in his palm. His eyes roved on the small, delicate kanji drawn with a precise hand.

_Cranes on turtles fly_  
_77 calls you here_  
_the next moonless night_

Goro resisted the urge to twitch at the bastardization of a haiku and memorized the message, discretely shoving the paper into his mouth and swallowing it. He stared warily at the door as if expecting Kurosaki to jump back in; but when she didn’t, he laid back on the bed, staring at the white ceiling in deep contemplation.

*****

Takemura’s plan was to completely ignore the hidden message. There was nothing good that could come out of it, he reasoned as he dressed for work the next morning. Seventy-seven could mean many things. The number of times Kurosaki planned to stab him under cover of darkness on a moonless night. The number of yakuza that would show up to brutally murder him for the crime of daring to insult Kurosaki, who just happened to be the queen of all things pink and horrific. He paused lacing up his boots. Or the year that he had his accident.

Takemura did not enjoy thinking about the accident, mostly because he couldn’t remember anything about it. It wasn’t from lack of trying - in the days after he had regained consciousness, against the recommendations of his doctors, he had spent countless hours trying to recall anything about the two decades of his life that had just disappeared up in smoke. The last thing that he could remember was preparing himself for the interview to be promoted to be Arasaka Saburo’s bodyguard. It was the greatest honor Takemura could have received, but he was told that he had failed the interview and had spent the rest of his time serving in the Arasaka special forces in remote places around the world.

Until the accident.

The first memory after the incident was him sitting in a chair in Kinomoto-sensei’s office on his first day as a security officer, being told that he had just spent the last four years in a treatment facility. It was a jarring experience, not remembering his recovery nor recognizing where he was, but Kinomoto-sensei had explained his situation so calmly and gently that Takemura, in turn, did not panic.

At least, not until he looked at himself in the mirror, and everything that the doctor had told him became way too real. Takemura did not like thinking on that first year, almost as much as he disliked thinking about the accident. After nearly half a year of meeting various neurosurgeons and even, at one point, a hypnotist and a monk, reality began to sink in. No one could explain his memory loss nor the empty void that had settled in his chest like a second friend. He had become a mess then, drunk or high on anything he could get his hands on during his hours off the clock. He’d done everything and anything that he could think of to distract himself from that emptiness, from that deep-set sense of failure. In the quiet hours, in those rare times that he allowed himself to think on why he was pushing himself towards such a downward spiral, he could never untangle the complex set of emotions and explain himself. In the end, illness and recovery - and even failing to become Arasaka Saburo’s bodyguard, while unfortunate - should not have been enough to have stirred up this inexplicable drive to lose and leave himself behind in the past.

Perhaps it was the uncertainty, Goro considered as he tightened the laces too strongly, nearly tearing the laces from their eyelets. It didn’t help that Kinomoto-sensei had been tight-lipped about what the accident actually had been without giving a reason why. After the first year, he finally revealed it to him.

“You’re finally mentally stable enough, but there’s no easy way to say this, Takemura-san. You had a cyberpsychotic break,” Doctor Kinomoto confessed, and Goro remembered staring at the swirl of his face in shock. “It was sudden, and due to your long years of service, quite surprising. Arasaka forces were able to retrieve you safely and ran an experimental procedure to try to save your life.” The doctor sighed, shaking his head. “The specialists did their best, but the damage was so extensive that the treatment resulted in your amnesia.” 

“You must be mistaken.” Goro could only gape at the doctor in disbelief. “I have never had any issue with my implants.”

The swirl of Doctor Kinomoto nodded. “Yes, and your records prove that. But something happened that year, in 2077. Something so classified, even I can’t read it on your medical records. It’s paramount that you do not try to recreate those memories, Takemura-san,” the doctor warned. “I know you have been trying - do not deny it, Takemura-san. There is no guarantee that remembering whatever triggered you before the break will not undo the positive effects of the treatment. You must continue to take your medicine daily, it seems to be having quite a positive effect...”

Takemura finished tying his laces, staring at the black leather of his boots solemnly. Knowing his status as a recovered cyberpsycho did not help matters at all. In Japan, it was the blackest mark that could exist on someone’s medical record, an acknowledgment that someone’s mental strength was so fragile that it could be broken by something as trivial as a replaced limb. The revelation sucked his energy, and he felt unwilling to seek further confirmation that he had gone insane. He had only recently come to terms with the numbness that came with living, and he had no intentions on ever returning back to the pitiable man he was up until a year ago. There was nothing good that could come from knowing about his past or about the accident, he repeated in his head, grunting as he stood up. He needed to focus on his recovery, on his ascension back into Arasaka Corporation’s good graces and eventually, back into the special forces.

If he continued to repeat that to himself, he might actually believe it.

He carefully equipped his body armor before walking out the door of his small apartment and into the bustling world. He rode the bus, and then the train as he usually did, staring out the window silently as he watched the scenery fly by. The Arasaka uniform usually kept the seat next to him free from neighbors, but today a young man with his hair covering half of his face (and a scowl covering the rest) sat next to him. He curled into himself as he leaned forward, his shoulders tense as his elbows rested on his knees.

A quiet alarm bell rang in Goro’s head as reality warped around him. For a flash, another man sat in his place, with the same messy hair but a different face. Even through the side profile, Takemura could see the split lip and the bruise that had bloomed on his chin.

_”I vowed to protect her with my life, Takemura-san,” the man retorted angrily, his face slowly starting to turn towards his. Takemura could only see the bright blue of one of his eyes at the angle, and it was full of righteous fury. “And protecting her includes her honor.”_

Goro blinked and the image was gone, the scowling young man back in his rightful place. The swirl of pride, anger, and resignation that had descended upon him with the memory gripped him tightly.

Fuck, Goro panicked internally, forcing himself to tear his eyes off of his neighbor to stare out the window. He went back through his memories of that morning, and distinctly remembered staring down at the large green pill in the palm of his hand before he knocked it back. He had taken his medicine that morning, he was sure of it.

Despite that, he was starting to remember.

*****

Goro spent the entirety of a day in a daze. The job of a security officer in Arasaka Takamatsu never deviated from the norm: he patrolled the building in a set pattern, took his breaks at the same time, changed rotations at the same time. Therefore, he could mindlessly patrol the building, not truly paying attention to anything around him. He avoided looking at faces; every person that crossed his path presented another opportunity for his memory to attempt to reassert itself, and the anxiety that built inside his chest was almost suffocating.

Despite his best efforts, bits and pieces began to filter back to him, mostly random flashes of faces superimposed on his coworkers that evoked intense emotions without any context. Halfway through his shift, he contemplated whether it was worth going to Kinomoto-sensei for an increased dose of his medicine. He was, in fact, near the infirmary when when he ran into Kurosaki. 

He had turned a corner, too distracted by his thoughts to notice his surroundings, and found himself colliding with a pink-haired dog toy. At least, he assumed that was what she was imitating based on the high pitched squeal that escaped her throat as she tumbled to the ground, arms akimbo. Takemura cursed his bad luck; Kurosaki was the last person that he had wanted to see. He had half a mind to interrogate her on what the hell she meant by leaving him some half-assed secret message, but realized in time that while the hallway was empty, they were in a very public area in a building riddled with cameras. He managed to mutter an almost inaudible apology between gritted teeth, and reluctantly held his hand out to help her back up to her feet.

Kurosaki took his hand easily and pulled herself up, using her momentum to push herself flush to his chest. Takemura automatically took a step back, but she grabbed the front of his uniform to keep him in place. She lifted her mouth to his ear and he froze as if she held a gun to his stomach.

“Please, don’t go,” she pleaded softly. He could feel her breath, warm on his ear, and shuddered. “The meds aren’t helping you, but I know what will. You know where to find me,” she concluded quickly. Before he could understand what just happened, she had let him go and was sauntering off in the other direction as if they had never even crossed paths. He lifted a hand to touch his ear and scowled, swiping at his earlobe as if that would remove her lingering heat. Once his initial revulsion had died down, though, Takemura watched her walk away, bewildered by her behavior. 

She had almost sounded tender and desperate as she begged him not to go. Something about the way that Kurosaki’s voice had genuinely wavered struck him as odd and antithetical to the character she had played so far. He gazed down at the glass doors of the infirmary before he sighed and went against his better judgement. He turned and walked away, leaving the infirmary behind.

*****

When Takemura’s shift had ended and he left the Arasaka Takamatsu building, the world had already darkened into night. He stared up into the sky and noted with some alarm that although the light pollution from the city often prevented him from clearly seeing the dark expanse of stars above, the moon would always be there, hanging like a luminescent pearl. But tonight, it wasn't there.

It was already the new moon.

If he was going to meet up with Kurosaki, he’d had to figure out where she wanted to meet, and quickly. He looked down at his uniform and sighed. First thing was to go home and change - there was no way he would get caught out wearing his uniform, even if his cybernetics were more than enough to determine his place of employment. 

He remained standing on the train as it made its way across the city. Every seat was filled with young men and women ready for a night on the town, and Goro suddenly felt every one of his fifty plus years. It wasn’t that long ago that he would have been among them on a Friday night like this, he thought wistfully, remembering the exuberance of his academy days. He had always been serious about his studies, proven by his top marks, but he had managed to find some time to innocently - well, perhaps not as innocently as he’d like to remember - explore Tokyo with his closest friends and classmates.

The world had changed since he was young, Goro mused as he watched a young man and woman hold hands tightly as they leaned against each other. Japan had affected the West, but the West had also affected Japan - people seemed more open with their affection than he remembered being proper. Seeing the pair, young and fresh faced, brought an unexpected lurch of his heart as he considered them a little closer. The woman’s hair was jet black, put up into pigtails at the side of her head, and he was struck with a sort of nostalgia that he couldn’t place.

Reality had begun to twist again, but a sudden burst of giggles interrupted his thoughts before the memory could take hold. He looked over his shoulder, blinking when he saw a group of three girls sending him shy smiles. They blushed behind their hands, covering their faces as they made eye contact, and he frowned, looking down at himself to check if something was out of place. No - his uniform was still immaculate, as far as he could tell. He looked back up at the girls and raised an eyebrow at them, surprised when he heard a faint squeal out of one of them.

Oh, he realized with sudden clarity, taken aback at the attention. He sent a quick, knowing smirk their way before looking away, only hearing the destruction that he left in his wake. A small wave of smugness washed over him and he chucked lowly to himself. Maybe he wasn’t that old yet. 

The train came to a stop for the main station downtown, and the girls flittered past them, a cloud of perfume, high heels, and short skirts, sending more shy glances his way as they shuffled off of the train. One of the girls hesitated for a moment in front of him, but a glance down at his uniform changed her mind. She only sent a wink his way before tottering after her friends. That was more like what he had expected, he thought ruefully as the train doors closed. Young, pretty girls knew better than to get involved with Arasaka Security.

He looked around to see the car holding only half the number of passengers it had previously. The rest of the ride was uneventful, the train becoming more and more empty as the stops moved closer to his apartment on the edges of the city. He sat down on one of the many vacated seats and rested his head against the window, falling into his thoughts as he gazed out at the scenery flying by.

Moonless nights, seventy-seven, and cranes and turtles. Kurosaki’s note mentioned cranes and turtles, a common motif in gardens - so common, in fact, that Takemura could not think of a garden without trees bent into those delicate shapes. She must have planned to meet somewhere on the island which reduced the number of options down considerably, but not enough for him to outright know where to go. He would need to do more research; he connected to Arasaka webspace, his eyes flickering red as he ran searches for popular gardens in Takamatsu. Results populated his HUD and he felt his breath catch as he read one of the options. A photograph of a massive, almost soaring pine tree filled his vision, and something like nervousness stirred in the pit of his stomach. Takemura read caption to the image, which listed the location: Ritsurin gardens. Somehow, instinctually, he knew deep in his bones that was where he needed to go.

He canceled the search and let his head fall against the headrest of the seat, considering. No matter how he looked at it, he couldn’t figure out what Kurosaki’s angle was. She made herself out to be more friend than foe, but who knew if that was just to draw him into a trap? It would be better to arrive prepared, and preparation meant guns.

Technically, based on his recovery plan, he was not supposed to have access to any weapons, especially firearms. The potential consequences of an armed, previously reformed cyberpsycho relapsing was too great. But he had managed to obtain a few on the sly, unable to sleep at night without the knowledge that there was working iron underneath his pillow. He was thankful, momentarily, for his paranoia - getting that kind of equipment on short notice in Japan was close to impossible. At that last thought, his vision splintered, his system alarms going haywire as he suddenly felt hot sun on his back and sweat collecting on his neck.

_”Is that a vending machine for guns?” he heard himself asking incredulously in English as he walked up to the wall. It was almost ridiculous enough to distract him from the wonderful sight of the woman bending over as she collected her prize. Her pleather skirt was so tight that it seemed painted on and left almost nothing to the imagination, and it was all he could do to resist the urge to reach out and squeeze. The aforementioned woman quickly stood up at his words, saving him from his impulses as she tossed her dark black hair and posed with the pistol. Her posture emphasized her assets, mimicking old movie posters he remembered from his youth. She looked over her shoulder at him, her smile turning devilish as she flicked her eyes up and noticed his expression._

_”Hell yes it is! Welcome to Night City, Goro,” she laughed, green eyes twinkling. She sauntered up to him, hips swinging deliberately, and slowly trailed her fingers down the front of his shirt, her face upturned as she continued to smirk at him. He grabbed her hand before she made it to his pelvis and held it tightly, glancing around the street in exasperation._

_”You tease me too often,” he growled at her, his voice deep and low but with no bite in his tone. Her pupils dilated at his words, and he smirked down at her before letting her hand go. Now knowing the street was basically deserted, he felt comfortable enough to lean in, nipping at her ear before whispering into it. “You will regret it tonight, -“_

The same lust he felt in the memory continued to pour through his veins as the images faded away, leaving him with an uncomfortable stiffness in his lap. He blinked away the memory, shuddering and taking deep breaths, trying to think about anything but the feelings that blazed through him. The next word on his lips would have been her name, he was sure, but now he couldn’t remember what he had been about to say. Who was that woman, he wondered as he flexed his thighs and willed for his erection to die down, and how did she cause such a reaction in him? He couldn’t remember the last time he had such a visceral desire for anyone, much less someone dressed like a street walker.

And when had he been in Night City? 

The announcement for his stop began to echo through the empty car, and he climbed out of his seat. He thought on the woman’s green eyes and open smile and felt that same twinge inside of him. It was starting to become dangerous, his curiosity starting to overpower his common sense. Kurosaki would do well to know as much as she claimed, he thought darkly as he began the trek to the bus stop. He had no idea what he would do if she didn’t.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Would I stare at Takemura if I saw him on a train? Probably. Yes.


	4. sakura drops

The stillness of the night unnerved Takemura as he crept through the Ritsurin Gardens. It was quiet. Almost too quiet. There were no crickets, no buzzing or any wildlife - even the waters surrounding the gardens seemed lifeless. He was starting to regret his decision to have the meet the further he wandered. The area was too open, with only curated, emaciated trees as cover. If worst came to worst he could duck into one of the massive, ancient teahouses, but he would need to dash over a large stretch of uncovered ground to reach them. He felt too exposed, and the soldier in him did not like these odds. He saw movement in the corner of his eye and he turned to it, finding himself face to face with his target.

“You’re late,” the liar who claimed to be Kurosaki Tomoyo greeted him with crossed arms as she leaned against a large pine tree. Her voice was easily two octaves lower than usual, which put her in the range of normal humans instead of the the ear destroying pitch that she used at work, and she had developed a curiously strong Kansai accent seemingly overnight. Stranger still was her complete change in demeanor and appearance. Her slightly too wide, almost maniacal sunny smiles were swapped with a glower and a slightly downturned lip that made her almost unapproachable. Instead of long pink hair and tight, colorful dresses, she had a short, dark bob that was cropped to barely pass her chin and was encased in a loose, all-black tactical outfit. But despite all of those changes, she had the same almost haunting sea green eyes, and he knew it was her.

“You specified a date, not a time,” Takemura retorted easily, striding closer to Kurosaki. He had changed into black slacks and wore a high collared white shirt under his jacket that did a decent job at hiding all of his Arasaka hardware. Apprehension flowed through him as he finally came face-to-face with her; he had only been able to spend a few hours on reconnaissance around the gardens, and it made his skin itch at his sloppiness. Although he had no proof, he was certain that Kurosaki knew that he would feel off-center without being able to plan properly and walking into an unknown situation. He needed to be prepared to handle any surprises, and he continued to peer suspiciously around him as he scanned the area. “Why am I here?”

“Curiosity? The westerners claim that it killed the cat,” the duplicitous Kurosaki answered with a slight quirk of her lip, and chuckled darkly when she saw his hands inch closer to his waist, where his gun was hidden at his side. “No, Takemura-san, you wont need that. Not with me.”

“Then stop threatening me and answer my question,” he demanded, not moving his hands further away from his weapon. “Why lure me out here in the middle of the night to meet in a city park?”

“This park is special to you, even if you can’t remember. I knew you wouldn’t be able to resist.” Kurosaki reached into her pocket and Goro drew out his gun in a flash and aimed it at her. She rolled her eyes as she revealed a pack of cigarettes, shaking the container mockingly at him before pulling one out and placing it between her lips. She lit the cigarette with a spark that flew from her fingers. One deep puff later and she drew the cigarette out of her mouth, exhaling a cloud of smoke downwind. Goro grimaced at the smell.

He kept his gun pointed at her. “I have never been here.”

“That you remember,” Kurosaki drawled, tapping her cigarette against a finger lightly. Ash wafted down to the grass below.

Goro frowned at her words, and then the debris. “You should not smoke here.”

Kurosaki grinned, a flash of teeth that seemed almost involuntary. It was confirmed when she frowned deeply and stuck the cigarette back in her mouth, scowling at him. “Once a boy scout, always a boy scout,” she grumbled to herself around the cigarette, turning on her heel and walking down the path away from Takemura. Takemura, for his part, stood still as she walked away from him, his gun still aimed at her back. Kurosaki paused and turned halfway to face him, her eyebrows furrowed and her voice tinged with annoyance. “You comin’ or not?”

Goro blinked and lowered his gun. They considered each other for a few seconds before Takemura shrugged, holstered his gun, and fell into step next to her. “You did not answer my question.”

Kurosaki did not respond. The sound of their shoes crunching against the gravel paths sounded terribly loud in the near silence of the gardens as they meandered towards an unknown destination. “Maybe ‘cause it’s a dumb one,” she finally countered frankly. “We both know why you’re here. Arasaka’s told you one thing, and now here I am telling you it’s another. Funny thing is,” she took another long drag of her cigarette and exhaled, acrid smoke escaping past her lips and into the air, “you got a little voice and some recollections sayin’ that maybe I’ve got a point.“ Kurosaki stopped suddenly and stepped closer to Takemura, her cybernetic eyes glowing in the dark as she stared up at him. “So, Takemura-san, you gonna ask me the right question?”

The right question? Another silence stretched between them as he considered the woman in front of him. Nothing about her made sense. Not even his doctor had clearance to access any information about what caused his memory loss, so either Kurosaki was lying, involved, or high up enough in Arasaka that she could have access to privileged information. “Who are you?”Kurosaki smiled, a real, genuine smile, and flicked the cigarette into a trash can. “Gold star for the boy scout,” she hummed, pleased at his question. “Glad to see that big brain of yours is still workin’.” She motioned for him to come closer, and he obliged, leaning over her so that she could speak to him. He started to turn his head to look at her in confusion when she said nothing, and felt a need plunge into his neck, right above the junction of his cybernetics and real skin. Kurosaki backed away from him immediately, just out of his reach.

“Sorry,” he heard her say through the fog. Distantly, he was impressed at the strength of the drug - Kurosaki either had a very good black market contact or he was in deeper trouble than he thought - and furious at himself for falling for such an obvious trick. “But I need to make sure you don’t kill me, and this isn’t the right place to talk.”

Goro’s hand flew up to his neck and he groaned, taking a step towards Kurosaki. He reached out to her, but the world was already becoming blurry and upside down. He stumbled and fell to his knees, and then teetered over to the side. He felt Kurosaki catch his limp form and gently place him on the ground.

“Feugghh,” Goro uttered in an impotent rage.

“I know,” she crooned soothingly as she knelt in front of him, her hand patting his shoulder. “I know.”

The world went black.

*****

_Good evening, this is Erica from NHK News._

_Tonight, at 9:00 PM, there was a thirty minute power outage that affected parts of Sunport Takamatsu. A breaker failed, causing a transformer to explode. Workers were on the scene immediately and quickly resolved the issue._

_Arasaka Corporation apologizes deeply for the inconvenience, and does not anticipate any further interruptions in service._

*****

Goro woke with a gasp, and looked around in horror. His body felt heavy and sluggish, his mouth feeling like it was one single cotton ball and his head throbbing in pain. The room he sat in was pitch black - or, at least, he thought it was until he regained more of his senses and could feel the fabric on his face and see a tiny bit of light filtering around the edges of the cloth that covered his eyes. His body felt compressed and tight, and when he tried to move his arms he could not move. He jerked roughly and hissed when he felt metal wires dig into his skin.

“Ah, you’re awake,” Kurosaki, the queen of deceit, exclaimed joyously, and he felt a tug on the back of his head. Takemura blinked rapidly as the blindfold fell away, readjusting to the light in the room. He did not respond, simply glowering at her as she grabbed a metal folding chair and sat across from him. Kurosaki crossed her legs and leaned forward, leaning her head against one of her hands as her elbow rested on a thigh. He surreptitiously glanced around the room, trying to get some of his bearings and maybe figure out an escape route. The room was dimly lit, a single bulb swinging above him and casting shadows about the room. There were no windows, and the only exit appeared to be a single door to the right of Kurosaki that leaked no light. Either the adjoining room was dark, or the door was tightly sealed. Goro hoped it was the former.

“Would you like some tea?” the two-faced serpent asked faux-seriously with a smile in her eyes, switching back to her prim Tokyo accent as if laughing at some private joke.

“Fuck off,” Takemura gritted out, and Kurosaki chuckled at his rancor, the smile in her eyes spreading to her lips. “I will not tell you anything.”

“That’s fine,” Kurosaki replied easily, her Osaka accent returning, and she leaned back into the chair. “I don’t need anything from you. You ready to hear my answer? To who I am.”

“I suddenly find myself much less interested,” Goro retorted dryly, grunting in frustration when he realized that his struggles against the chair were fruitless. “It is becoming clear that I have made a misstep.”

“I wasn’t lying earlier, Goro-kun,” Kurosaki reassured him. “I’m not here for intel. I’m here to tell you things, like what actually happened in 2077.”

“I doubt that, and I have already been informed,” Goro sneered at her. He was furious with himself for getting in this situation, and to make it worse, the level of familiarity she was assuming she had with him was pissing him off. “If you plan on using that to blackmail me, you will find it highly ineffective. My ability to maintain my current job has been approved by multiple doctors.”

“Goro-kun-“

“Do not call me that!” Takemura exploded, baring his teeth.

“Oh, Goro-kun,” Kurosaki sighed, standing up out of the chair and crouching in front of him. “I’m only here to help you. Calm down.”

“Maybe I would believe you if you had not drugged and kidnapped me!” Goro twisted, restarting his attempt to find a way to slip out of the bindings. Kurosaki sighed, holding her hands up in a placation.

“Okay. Okay, yes, I could’ve gone about this better. But we’ve had no idea how to get to you without taking from extreme measures, and this was the only one that will probably end up with me alive.” She slapped her hands onto her thighs before standing up, pacing in front of him before she crossed her arms and gave him a look. “Don’t make me put you in time out until you calm down.”

“We?” Goro asked instead, catching onto her words. “Who are you? Who are you working for? Is it Kang Tao? Militech?”

Kurosaki grimaced at his accusation. “Kang Tao? Seriously, of all the-? Right. I should probably introduce myself properly.” She stepped back and bowed lowly to him. “Name’s not Kurosaki - I’m special agent Kudo Aoi. We first met in 2062.” Those sea green eyes flashed up at him as she straightened from her bow, and a memory blazed through him.

_A woman was bleeding out in front of him, her hands pressing down on her stomach as she gasped for breath. Her helmet was covered in grime, her uniform in blood. He dashed out into the cross-fire, crouching and grabbing her by the shoulders as he dragged her away. “Are you a fuckin’ idiot?” She wheezed, those same sea green eyes blazing at him in anger through the visor. “Clear - clear the damned area first!”_

_”Shut up, Kudo,” he grunted harshly, the cover of the tree line growing closer and closer as he lugged her over the rough terrain. He shoved the fear and horror deep inside, allowing his adrenaline and training to take over him. “You are the one who broke formation. Do not lecture me on protocol.”_

_She laughed, a pained, hysterical chuckle. “I did, didn’t I. Fuck, that was dumb.”_

_He leaned over her and he shoved her against the cover of a large fallen tree, pressing down on her wound. Blood stained his gloves. She wouldn’t stop bleeding. He looked over his shoulder, scanning the area, and shouted into his comms over the sound of gunfire. “Medic! Man down!”_

_A weak grip encircled his wrist and he looked back down at her. “Takemura,” she gasped, punctuating his name with a squeeze. “Did I - did I get the kid out?”_

_He looked down at her pleading eyes and hesitated._

“You saved my life, Goro-kun. Now it’s my time to save yours.”

“Aoi-chan.” Goro breathed out her name as the images faded back to the older version of the woman from his memories. A sudden tenderness rushed into his chest and he gawked at her. “What..? I do not... understand.“

A sad smile spread over Aoi’s face. “Long time no see, Goro-kun. You ready to listen?”

Takemura couldn’t seem to bring himself to speak, staring at Aoi in shock. He had expected all of his memories to rush back to him, but nothing more than the snippet of that wretched jungle came to him. Takemura had no friends that had attempted to reach out after his incident, so he had assumed that he simply had not had any during the last decade of his life. But now... “Wait - tell me first. Why now? It has been years.”

Aoi primly sat back down in her chair and scooted it slightly closer to him, leaning forward conspiratorially. “You’re -” Aoi paused, shaking her head. “Because you asked. You sent me a cryptic message telling me to find you if I didn’t hear from you in three years. Don’t ask me why three, i’unno, and you’d done this a couple of times but you always messaged me back within a couple months.” Aoi frowned, shaking her head. “But this time... I might’ve jumped the gun, lookin’ for you a bit early, but I was getting worried. Imagine my surprise when I tracked you down and you had no idea who I was. Realized I was going to need backup after that.”

“Backup?” Goro tilted his head pensively. “So this is an official extraction?”

Aoi grinned, a menacing smile that showed all of her teeth. “‘Course not. To be fair, it’s been a while since anything I’ve done’s been sanctioned.”

Goro blinked at her, uncomprehending, before understanding dawned on him. Kudo Aoi was one of _them_. “You are not just a special agent. You are black ops.” Goro accused, venom in his voice.

The existence of Arasaka black ops was an open secret. It was a branch completely separate from the special forces, which only sometimes took part in black ops operations. No one knew who they were or their goals, but they always left a trail of bodies wherever they went. The agents held a veil of mystery and allure to some, but Takemura personally regarded them as anathema to everything Arasaka stood for. They were without honor, rabid dogs that had no accountability and were for some reason allowed to be above any rule of law. Black ops agents were more likely to stab you in the back than anything else. Why the hell would he trust one to save his life when he wouldn’t trust one to even run a clean op?

Aoi surprised him by laughing so hard that she doubled over, and he stared at her in disbelief as she gasped for breath, wiping tears from the corners of her eyes. “Gods, Goro-kun,” she chortled out, still trying to stuff down her giggles in vain. “That was so eerie, took me right back to 2070. Y’know, I was real scared that they did more than just mess with your memory when they got in your head, but that there just proves it’s still you, through and through.” She opened out her arms, leaning back into the chair. “Yep, that’s me, Agent Kudo. I don’t exist and I answer to no one, which is why when you get your memory back I’m giving you the biggest I-told-you-so speech and you’re just gonna sit and take it like a good boy.”

Goro flexed against the restraints on his chair again, looking pointedly at Aoi. “If we are such good friends, why is this necessary?”

“Because I’m not a fuckin’ idiot,” Kudo snapped, all humor draining from her face. She scowled at him, her voice sharp. “I don’t know what they fuck they did to you, or if you’re even you, and a whole host of other things that could lead me to shufflin’ off this mortal coil earlier than I planned. So, we’re going to do this my way, which means you sit pretty right there while I tell you a couple things.” She put a hand up and started to count off her fingers. “One, you were Arasaka-sama’s bodyguard for nearly two decades, which, let me tell you, gave me all sorts of feelings when I heard about his murder. Two, you sent me a message in 2081 chock full of half-formed secret codes, convincing me that there was someone else I needed to work with in case the worst came to pass. Three, I spent a year trying to find this person - you’re fuckin’ welcome, by the way - and managed to find almost no trace of them, which means they’re either dead or real damn good. Three-and-a-half, I found out you had some friends in awfully high places willing to give me funding but not tell me a damn thing about what happened to you. And four, I gave up and tried to find you instead, which took an embarrassingly long time because why the fuck would I think to look in the gods damned employee directory for a man who claimed he was in mortal peril?”

Aoi breathed heavily as she finished her rant, crushing her fingers into a tight ball as she looked away from Takemura. Takemura stared at Aoi in disbelief. “You expect me to believe that I was Arasaka Saburo’s bodyguard, and I let him die?”

Takemura had spent many hours reviewing the mystery surrounding the death and revival of Arasaka Saburo from every source that he could find. It had started due to a sort of twisted sense of schadenfreude that whoever had been chosen over him had been the cause of such a disaster, but as he dug deeper, he had more questions than answers. Almost all of the information on the net had been unsubstantiated nonsense, but nothing had ever mentioned his name or even Arasaka’s bodyguard. He had always assumed that whoever that was had also died with Arasaka.

Aoi scoffed, rolling her eyes at him as she threw her arms up in disbelief. “Really? That’s the most unbelievable part of what I told you? Typical.”

“All of it is unbelievable,” he snapped, glaring at her. “But especially that. I am not someone who fails so completely.”

“Ugh,” she huffed, shaking her head. “I wonder how your head can fit through doors with an ego like that. Think about it, Goro-kun. What kind of security guard has the high-end ‘netics you have? Hell, what kind of special forces grunt? What’s the last thing you remember?”Takemura hesitated. He knew exactly where she was leading him, because he was just thinking it himself. “Preparing for the interview.”

“Hm, awfully suspicious point in time to forget,” Aoi snarked, crossing her arms and frowning at him. “You know, like maybe forgetting that entire part of your life would be highly beneficial to anyone who didn’t want a disgraced bodyguard to spill the beans on what actually happened in Night City and, y’know, caused the death of almost every member of the board.”

A tense silence fell upon them, and Takemura considered the woman in front of him. He had always felt that something was off about her when she was playing at Kurosaki Tomoyo. But as Kudo Aoi, she was drawing him in easily; almost too easily with her animated presence and crude but warm manner of speech. Was it because she was really who she said, and he was unconsciously remembering her? Or was she fooling him a second time? He stared up at the ceiling, carefully going over the few memories that had started to resurface. Nothing was conclusive - of course the universe would not be so kind to provide him a memory involving a calendar or a newspaper.

“Let us say I believe you. Is that why I had a cyberpsychotic break? Because I failed?” Goro watched Aoi’s face morph into an even deeper scowl. “You say I sent you a message in 2081, but that is impossible. I was in a recovery facility at the time.”

“You never had a cyberpsychotic break, Goro-kun,” Aoi stressed, her lips thinning into a line. “No, it wasn’t a cyberpsychotic break. There was no stint at a recovery facility. Gods, who the hell stays in a recovery facility for that long without remembering anything? You were gagged, black-listed. I still don’t know by who, or why, and I really wanna find out - but like I said, you sent me a message before you disappeared.“ She took a deep breath, the next words coming out practiced, as if she had said them out loud a thousand times. “You said there would be a key to unlock everything. That if you disappeared, you most likely were not dead but silenced and I needed to find you within the next five years. You told me to tell you just one phrase.”

She stood up and leaned closer to him, her mouth almost kissing his ear. He felt her hair on his cheek and tensed, preparing himself for anything. “You said to say,” Aoi switched then from her smooth Japanese to a breathy, heavily accented English. She said the words slowly and carefully, as if casting a spell: “Valerie waits in Mikoshi.”

Aoi moved away from him and sat back in the chair, staring at Goro expectantly. Goro, in turn, stared back at Aoi in confusion as he processed her words. Mikoshi sounded vaguely familiar, but he wasn’t privy to the same kind of intel that he used to receive in the special forces - or, he supposed, as Arasaka Saburo’s bodyguard. A silence hung in the air as they silently regarded each other. Goro broke the silence first. “Valerie waits in Mikoshi? Is that some kind of code? What does that even - “

Suddenly, Goro’s fingers started to twitch. And then his arms started to shudder. He gaped up at Aoi in terror and, in response, she dug into a pocket and pulled out a thick piece of leather only to shove it between his teeth. As he started to seize up, his world became covered in black spots and he tried futilely to blink the world back into clarity, and the klaxon of his cybernetics’ warning system rang wildly in his ears and overwhelmed his senses. An alert popped up on his HUD: Overriding Memory Lock One.

I will not pass out for the third time in a week, Takemura thought angrily as he fought against the darkness swirling around him. This is ridiculous.

Takemura, of course, passed out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter: Let’s do the time warp again!


	5. Spring 2077

春  
雨  
や  
*  
た  
し  
か  
に  
見  
た  
る  
*  
石  
の  
精

_Six Years Ago: Spring 2077_

Tearing through Night City riddled with bullets and a three-quarters dead merc stinking up his passenger seat was not the way that Takemura Goro had anticipated spending his time that afternoon. Nor had he anticipated sitting on a crate in the dirty basement clinic of a small-time ripperdoc, watching him try to put that same merc back together. But since he also hadn’t imaged any of the events that led to his current predicament - starting with a murder, and ending with a split-second decision to hunt down the alleged killers himself, defying Yorinobu’s order to not leave Konpeki Plaza - it would probably be wise if he just set aside all expectations for the foreseeable future.

Something had felt off about the death of Arasaka Saburo since the moment that Yorinobu had declared it a poisoning. Combined with the news of the break-in and subsequent escape of the mercenaries involved, it wasn’t difficult to put two-and-two together and realize that Yorinobu was most likely covering for the embarassment of his father dying by the hands of no-name mercenaries at the heart of Arasaka power.

Takemura had been furious. So furious, in fact, that he felt compelled to complete one last mission for his fallen employer by bringing his murderers to justice. Yorinobu, in turn, felt compelled to try to silence Goro. Forcefully.

Goro could hear the vitals monitor beeping in a rhythmic manner in the background as the ripperdoc, Viktor Vector, worked on the mercenary who slumped, unmoving, in his operating chair. It’s hard to have a positive first impression of someone when your first meeting is pulling them out of a landfill, smelling of shit and desperation, their face nearly caved in from a bullet to the head. Add the charge of murdering the man he had swore to protect, and it became impossible. But the mercenary, V, had handled herself admirably when Yorinobu had turned on Goro and sent assassins his way, especially for the condition she was in; so Goro had put aside his pride and gave her some respect for her tenacity.

That respect was one of two reasons that he still sat on this damned crate losing feeling in his legs rather than trying to extract memories from her dead body. The other was that he still had lead in his arms and couldn’t feasibly leave. But the first was obviously the most important.

“V’s dying,” Viktor admitted to Goro once V stabilized enough for him to leave her side. Goro winced as he felt intense pressure from the ripperdoc digging around in his arm, ostensibly to pull bullets out of him. He was starting to suspect that he was being used as stress relief. “She put some kind of chip in her head that I’ve never seen before, and combined with the head wound... Can’t take it out or it’ll kill her, but keeping it in kills her too, just slower. System diagnostics show Relic as the model name, but it makes no sense unless - shit, V,” Viktor muttered lowly to himself, shaking his head as he finished pulling the last bullet out of Takemura’s arm. The metal crashed into the plate with a loud ping. “She kept talking about some big job. What the hell had she gotten into?”

It was asked like a rhetorical question, but Goro knew better than to risk agitating the man who was currently plunging a large needle into his body. “She stole from Arasaka. Yorinobu, specifically.”

Viktor paused for a brief moment in shock, needle in hand as he glanced up at Goro. He shook his head before continuing his task of stitching Goro up. “The son of the emperor? No wonder it blew up in her face.” Viktor grimaced before sighing softly. “Damn it, kid...”

Takemura said nothing in response; what was there to say when he fully agreed? The mercenary had eyes too large for her stomach, and she paid for it. When Viktor had finished sewing him up - a little more forcefully than he needed to, in Goro’s opinion - he rolled his chair back and sent a dismissive wave in Goro’s direction. “I’m going to pretend you weren’t here, and I suggest you don’t come back again. Arasaka corpo bringing over the merc that stole from Arasaka is a story I want no part of. Consider your treatment paid for by bringing our girl back here in one piece.”

Goro stood up and walked towards V, examining her one last time. He felt Viktor’s gaze burning through his back but he ignored it. Her eyes opened slightly as he approached, revealing the emerald crescent of her irises, and she groaned incomprehensibly. Viktor hadn’t bothered to clean all of the blood off of her face except around the hole in her head which was now covered in a large amount of gauze. She looked small and innocent as she curled into herself, her breaths shallow and wheezing as she struggled to survive. He gently clasped V’s shoulder, hoping to pass on - something, even though he couldn’t quite articulate what. Maybe the will to live another day, Takemura thought distantly as he squeezed gently, feeling her clammy skin beneath his fingers. But he felt compelled to touch her, to feel with his own hands that she was alive. She needed to live.

At first, she was a murderer. Then, grudgingly, she was his salvation. 

She was a means to an end, and that end was complete and total vengeance.

******

When he met her again in Tom’s Diner for the first time after her recovery, Takemura was unexpectedly struck by her beauty. She was like a diamond in the rough, he thought in the back of his mind as they sized each other up over the dirty tabletop. Deep forest green eyes surrounded by dark lashes and even darker bags. Dark hair bound into messy pigtails that made her look child-like, younger than he knew she was. Her long, delicate fingers impatiently tapped the surface of the table as she shifted in the cheap vinyl seats. She dressed just as indecently as every other resident of this dreadful city, a gold and black crop top leaving her shoulders bare and a garish necklace of a bullet nestled between her breasts. She lacked the refinement that he often saw back home, something wild and uncontainable in the way that she presented herself. He found himself drawn in anyways.

Goro knew from experience that beautiful women were the most dangerous kind. They had a way of getting under your skin, crawling into your insides and seducing you into making mistakes that you wouldn’t make otherwise. Arasaka’s enemies would often try to get to Arasaka-sama through him, surreptitiously sending attractive women, and sometimes men, his way to try to find a chink in Arasaka’s armor. A random encounter after work, a chance meeting in a coffee shop; Goro had seen it all. All for a chance for him to minutely slip up, to accidentally give up a vital piece of information. In the many years of his service to Arasaka, Goro had never made such a mistake.

Goro never makes mistakes as a general rule. He clenched the take-away cup in his hands tightly. He never made mistakes, before.

“Remember you flatlinin’ Dex,” V finally said, breaking the silence as she leaned back in the booth. The vinyl made an unpleasant, squeaking sound as she moved. “Never got to thank you for that.”

It took a second for Goro to realize who she was talking about. The fixer that had put a bullet through her head, now occupying her spot in that landfill graveyard.

“He was a liability,” Goro responded dismissively, taking a sip of tea. The taste was acrid and bitter, a cheap black tea seeped in boiling hot water for far too long. He grimaced and set it aside. “I took no joy in it.”

“And what about me? Am I one? A liability,” V challenged, her mouth flattening into a line. She crossed her arms and leaned forward, her forearms lined in parallel on the table. The light caught on the bullet necklace, her posture giving him an eyeful of her bosom. “You going to flatline me too, moment this is all good and done?”

Goro’s eyes flicked up to where the shard ports would be on the side of her head. The Relic, the catalyst for this living nightmare, taunted him from a distance. He remembered her shivering on the operating chair, young and afraid. He saw her now, half-healed and tired, puffing herself up in some sad attempt to intimidate him, and felt something between empathy and pity. “No. You have my word.”

V sent him a crooked smile, as if amused by the concept of honor. Maybe she was, growing up in this wretched place. “Is that supposed to be reassuring?”

He looked into the swirls of her eyes and tried not to be bewitched. After a moment, he tore his gaze away, watching the busy street outside of the window. He found himself unable to look at her. “My word is all I have left.”

V had nothing to say to that.

******

Takemura had bought another burner phone to make these particular calls. He sat on a park bench in a remote corner of Reconciliation Park surrounded by beautiful green trees and mountains of trash. He bent forward, numbly punching in the first number he knew by heart. It rang and immediately connected to voicemail.

“Aoi-chan,” he exhaled loudly in frustration, his hand involuntarily rising to his forehead as he gathered his thoughts. “You may hear some... upsetting news about me; most likely none of it is true. I am safe for now. Do not call me back on this number, and do not come here to try and find me - it will just put us both in danger. You know what I will ask you to do.” He paused for a second in hesitation before he continued softly. “Thank you.”

He hung up and started dialing the second number, but found himself unable to start the call. He stared at the device in his palm before he forced himself to dial the second number. “Sandayu-kun,” Goro said when he heard the line connect, looking at the face of his friend and protégé. Oda seemed shocked for a moment before his face warped into something darker. The look of a man betrayed, Goro thought sadly. Oda had no reason to believe otherwise.

“Takemura-san,” Oda acknowledged after a pause, his bright eyes trained onto the screen. “How unexpected.”

Goro’s first memory of Oda Sandayu was as a young man with the most serious expression he’d ever seen and a chip the size of Tokyo on his shoulder. Arasaka-sama had put Goro in charge of selecting a new bodyguard for his dearest daughter, Arasaka Hanako, and it was the biggest display of trust that he could ever have given him. In return, Goro took his task seriously and selected Oda from the hundreds of potential applicants and had personally trained Oda himself, always focusing on a high regard for honor and duty. Goro hoped that he could rely on that now.

“I will be quick. I did not kill Arasaka-sama, nor did I conspire to do so. I have a witness, one of the thieves that I tracked down, one of the ones that escaped. We must talk. I will send you coordinates and a time, if you are willing to meet.” Goro took a breath, and then fell silent. The silence seemed to stretch for an eternity.

“Send them,” Oda finally replied before hanging up.

Goro sighed with some measure of relief before sending the information in a text message. There must be some seeds of doubt in Arasaka about the chain of events, Goro thought with some satisfaction as he hit the send button. Otherwise, Oda would have never agreed to meet with a betrayer, no matter how close they were. At least, how close they used to be. The relief was short-lived, though, replaced with an ache that wouldn’t cease. He squeezed his eyes shut and leaned back into the cold stone of the bench.

He missed Japan wholeheartedly, a homesickness that etched itself into his bones and into every breath he took. Japan was where Arasaka-sama was still alive. Japan was where his honor was still intact. Japan was where he was respected, where he could walk the halls of Arasaka Tower with his head held high and no one would dare stop him.

Night City was jarring in the way that he had suddenly become anonymous, another face among the many hungry and depraved that prowled through its streets. The cheap, generic food tasted like ash in his mouth, the artificial flavors tasteless and choking. Advertisements screamed promises of sex and power from every available surface, but never seemed to provide anyone any fulfillment.

He was lonely even in Japan, but now he felt truly abandoned and alone.

All because of Yorinobu.

Goro took a deep breath and opened his eyes, trying to push the rage back down. He tore the SIM card from the burner phone and smashed it and the phone with the butt of his gun before walking away.

The abandoned remnants of the phone crackled on the bench until the sparks slowly died out.

******

“Well,” V drawled slowly as she stood next to Goro, arms crossed as they both watched the sleek black car drive away. “If he’s a friend, I’d hate to meet your enemies.” She tilted her head up at him and raised a brow, as if daring him to disagree.

Privately, Goro agreed. He had hoped - somewhat optimistically, he supposed in retrospect - that Oda would be more open to allowing him to speaking to Hanako directly. But beggars could not be choosers, and so he squashed the tiny bloom of panic that unfurled in his gut. He furrowed his brow and thought about what Oda had just revealed to him.

One. Oda was not too concerned with the truth of what happened to Arasaka Saburo - which meant that Hanako, in turn, was not especially curious. Either she believed her brother wholly, or the truth did not matter. He tried not to dwell on that point for long.

Two. Oda was especially concerned about Hanako’s safety. While his concern was hardly surprising and far from out of character, the incredible amount of tension that overcame Oda when he talked about the parade gave Takemura the impression that security was even worse than anticipated.

Goro turned to V. “Do you know anyone that can provide a map of Japantown?”

Her mouth fell slightly open in surprise, her brows furrowing in confusion as she gaped at him. “The hell do you need a map of Japantown for?” A flash of realization flew over her face and V began to shake her head vigorously. “Oh no. No, no, no. You can’t be serious.”

Goro leveled V with a steady look, and she groaned and looked up to the sky in askance.

“Fuck. You’re serious.”

******

Goro had been serious. So serious, in fact, that he now laid prone inside of a cramped air duct while he waited patiently for night to fall. It was the best way to sneak into this Maelstrom hideout, the first step in a tit-for-tat assignment that would grant him access to a powerful virus he needed to hack Hanako’s parade float. He was beginning to regret it. It gave him far too much time to think, and when he didn’t have a specific objective in front of him, he thought about V or how he would painfully torture Yorinobu.

Today, V won.

Something has changed in V during that ride to Jig Jig Street after their disastrous chat with Oda. He would never have called her unfriendly before, but now she was positively genial, calling him constantly. At first, he listened intently because he was convinced that she was talking to him in some sort of complicated code. She would update him on the state of the different gangs and factions throughout Night City vis-a-vis the outcomes of her seemingly endless stream of gigs. He noticed that the bags underneath her eyes, heavy and dark, never cleared up as time wore on. She seemed to be wearing herself down to the point where he wondered aloud about her health. “I probably don’t have much time left anyways, Takemura,” V replied loftily, her eyes betraying her sadness when he asked one day if she ever rested. “I’ll sleep when I’m dead. Don’t worry your head over me, I’ll be good for your revenge plot.”

It was weeks later that he realized that the intel that he thought V was providing was entirely useless, and that she was simply reaching out, trying to connect to another human being. Sometimes, in the middle of a conversation, she would get a faraway look in her eyes as she gazed somewhere off-camera, her eyebrows furrowed and her mouth downturned in a deep frown. She would always return her attention to him in a minute or two, an apologetic smile on her face as she plunged right back into talking about her day. Takemura felt it was not his place to pry, but a worry began to gnaw at the back of his mind that V was actually dying faster than she would allow herself to acknowledge.

He told himself he was only worried because he needed her to prove his innocence.

Takemura relied on his gut, on split-second first impressions to do his job - his former job - well. But first impressions weren't always the right ones, Takemura acknowledged as he reviewed his interactions with V. He had initially thought she was a narcissist, at the very least someone with delusions of grandeur. But she wasn’t any of that, just an Icarus with big dreams that flew too high, too fast. He was beginning to realize that while V spoke like a street kid, rough and blunt, her heart was soft and delicate. She somehow wore it on her sleeve at the same time that she hid what was precious to her deep inside, a paradox that mystified him every time he spoke to her. 

It was unlike him to take an interest in anyone. But something about V compelled him to continue to answer her calls, to grow fond of the sound of her voice and miss it when it wasn’t there.

Goro felt himself falling, in slow motion, into a mistake.

Goro eyed the air vent opening with some consideration. He would rather mount a full assault now than keep thinking over what he should do about V.

He calculated his odds and jumped down.

******

Then, unexpectedly, V asked him on a date and that sensation accelerated into a free-fall.

It was absurd in retrospect, the way that they went out of their way to meet every few days and share a meal. There were dozens of ways that he could have better used his time, especially as a wanted man on the run from one of the most powerful corporations on the planet. He risked, at minimum, someone from Arasaka recognizing him or V whenever they went out. But that same compulsion that initially led him to answering her phone calls also led him to crave any time that he could spend with her, common sense be damned. She was effortlessly tearing down his walls and crawling into his heart and he felt powerless to stop it.

“You sure you’re okay?” V had asked him during one of those dinners as she gracelessly stabbed a fork into her food. “You got that look on your face, like you’re processing some shit.”

“I am fine,” he had replied automatically. He was, in fact, processing some shit - particularly trying his best not to think about what his future held once he viciously dismembered one Arasaka Yorinobu. His plate was mostly untouched. He found that, even though V did her best to find the least awful options around town, he was never quite satisfied with the food. But watching her eat something substantial, even with her imperfect manners and her too large, too ambitious bites of food, calmed something protective deep inside of him.

He remembered that she had acquiesced quickly. It was one of the things that he appreciated about her, he thought as she went right back to shoveling food into her mouth. She never pried, even when he knew that she was incredibly curious.

“Sometimes - I wish to become a nomad. To leave this world and forget everything,” He had admitted then, his eyes locked onto her neckline. The dress she wore tonight exposed her collarbones and delicate neck, and it was almost enough to distract him from continuing down his murderous line of thought.

“I’ve lived without obligations most of my life,” V had confessed, the final blow to his thought processes that allowed him to fully focus on her. She swirled her glass of imitation wine, staring at the movement of the ruby red liquid in the glass. “Not always on purpose but - it is freeing, you know? Not going to lie. Never having to worry about hurting anyone or being hurt by someone, always making sure you’re taken care of first... But the cost is always feeling a little empty, ‘cause you protect yourself by letting no one close to you. But these days, I’m wondering if that’s how I want to go.”

“What do you mean?” He remembered asking her, shocked at her openness. V often hid her vulnerability under blustering and quips, and this was the most introspective he’d ever heard her. His heart-rate had elevated at her words, blood thrumming through him with nervous anticipation.

“I mean that I’m reconsidering it,” she mumbled as she took another sip of wine, her eyes trained on him. “I think sometimes, the risk of having a little obligation is worth the gain.” She smiled at him then, a cautious, shy smile that lit up her face and crinkled the corners of her eyes, before abruptly changing the subject.

******

Goro had decided to ignore what Valerie made him feel, ignored the subtle and not so subtle cues that she sent his way. He told himself it was just lust and loneliness, that she was too young, that he couldn’t afford the distraction, that he couldn’t afford to become invested in a merc that he needed to be able to drop at a moment’s notice. He could list a million valid reasons for why he should avoid any entanglements with a dying two-bit thief.

Then she had collapsed in front of him, suddenly and without warning.

They had finalized their stake-out of an Arasaka warehouse housing Hanako’s parade float when her eyes rolled into the back of her head mid-sentence, her body twitching as if in a seizure. He scooped her up and carried her to his van, ferrying her to the safety of his current squat. He glanced at her still form slumped in the passenger seat and tried to ignore the lump that was forming in his throat.

He had sat next to her after gently laying her down on a dirty mattress in the apartment he had commandeered, pushing her hair from her face and wiping down her sweaty brow with a questionably clean cloth. He watched her, limp and unmoving, and resisted the temptation to lace his fingers with hers and opted for pressing the back of his hand against her forehead. Her eyes opened barely before closing again and he took his hand back like he had been burned.

Goro finally admitted to himself that the concern squeezing his chest was due to something more than simple camaraderie, more than needing to use her for his own goals. Love had bloomed in the darkness, from a seed that burst through cracks in the pavement of Night City after being drizzled in acid rain.

“I will save you,” Takemura vowed fervently at her unconscious form, his hands clenched at his sides as he resisted the urge to touch her further. “I will find a way.”

******

When she woke up, she whispered her true name to him between sweat-slicked sheets, her eyes bright in the darkness as she told him her last secret.

He worshipped her every chance he could. She was a drug, he decided as he found himself situated between her thighs once again. She was his sun, his moon, his stars. She was every cliche that he could think of, every metaphor and simile that any poet had ever dreamed of. It would be embarrassing, to the man that he used to be, to see how much he craved her, how much he wanted to risk it all for her. He couldn’t bring himself to care as he lost himself in her warmth, in the tenderness of her embrace.

They both knew that they loved on borrowed time and they clawed at each other desperately, willing for the end to not arrive.

******

Then, as suddenly and as violently as V had entered his life, she was gone. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The spring rain  
> I definitely saw  
> The fay of stone
> 
> \- Murakami Kijo


	6. the dubious i love you

Kudo Aoi sat and resisted the urge to gnaw on her fingernails as she watched Takemura twitch and groan in pain, his head rolling in his unconscious state. It was a terrible habit that she had carried with her since childhood, and she had no intentions of starting it up again. That would mean she admitted that she was nervous, and even worse, that she cared about what happened to this ridiculous man with his naïve sense of honor and his preoccupation with justice.

Kudo closed her eyes and leaned back into the uncomfortable metal chair that dug into her hips and thighs. She was good at lying, but she couldn’t lie to herself about this. There was no guarantee that this memory unlocking process wouldn’t turn his brain into mush. She was nervous. Takemura Goro represented the last link to her past, from the time she was an optimistic and hopeful young woman. A brother-in-arms from before she had fully experienced the horrors of war, before she had returned home and realized that nothing had really changed. The world did not magically become a better place, even though Arasaka had achieved its goals. She had received no fanfare nor heroes welcome that came with an actual conflict - hell, she couldn’t even acknowledge that she’d been overseas. No, all she had received were nightmares and a crippling drug addiction.

So, Takemura held a special place in her heart, a small, bright corner that she had tried to purge on-and-off over the years. A proper black ops agent needed to have no personal connections, no qualms with taking any task she was given. She was simply a tool to be used and discarded, a human vessel to execute whatever was necessary to bring forth Arasaka Saburo’s ideal world.

It had always been a point of contention between them, how to achieve that greatness. The ceaseless conflict globe hopping during their special forces days had hurt them both in different ways. Takemura clung to the idea that the world could become a better place with a softer touch, that war and carnage were not the answer. He became a defender instead of an executioner. Aoi knew that it took blood on the hands of people like her to let the people like Goro walk that flower-lined path of righteousness.

So it was no shock that Takemura had vehemently disapproved when she told him that she had rose up in the ranks and transferred to black ops. She had known the conversation would not be pleasant, but she managed to underestimate how bad it would be. It was so explosive that all of her communication with him had ceased from almost weekly messages into a testy and volatile radio silence, and she found every excuse to not return to the compound, only staying for hours at a time. Then, in 2073, she received a text message.

“I apologize,” it read as she stared at the words in disbelief. She remembered exactly where she had been, frantically trying to find the source of the loud chime within her pockets as she hid in a panel waiting for her latest mark in London. It was a phone outside of the Arasaka network that had laid dormant for nearly three years, but that she always kept on her person, holding out hope that one day things would change between them. “I apologize,” she read again, the blue light of the screen illuminating her dark space. “I let my temper get the better of me. Let us stop fighting.”

At first, Aoi had been irrationally angry. How dare he, she thought with no little amount of fury. How dare he try to just waltz back into my life after questioning my honor, questioning my devotion. She contemplated leaving him on read, but in the end, she could never resist Takemura.

“You’ve got some nerve,” she messaged back. “This is more than you losing your temper.” She hit the send button harder than necessary, double checking that the phone was on vibrate and huffing as she started to shove the phone back into her clothes. But then the phone buzzed, and she tilted the phone back up to read the latest message.

“I know. I fear for you, Aoi. And that fear led to anger. But it is unfair for me to think of you in that way and to try to stop you from you want to do because of my own insecurities.” She reread the message twice, frowning at its formality, before turning off her phone and shoving it into her pocket again. There was a time when they could talk to each other without stilted and cautious words, but she supposed those times were long since past.

Later, in a tiny hotel room covered in blood and gore, she meticulously arranged the limbs of her mark with her gloved hands. She perched onto the relatively blood-free nightstand and removed her visor, and then one of her gloves so that she could shove a hand into her pockets and pull out her phone. Better now, before she lost her nerve. She glanced over at the body and sighed, angling herself in a way that it wouldn’t be visible from the camera, before speed-dialing the number that she had not called in three years. He had answered immediately, and they both wordlessly stared at each other through the screen. Takemura had been eating lunch, she had supposed, as she checked the digital clock next to her seat and saw him shove a plate out of view. He took her in with some level of apprehension on his face, setting down his chopsticks and arranging them parallel to each other to occupy his hands.

“Please tell me that is not your blood,” he grunted gruffly, breaking the silence. Aoi glanced at the small video stream of herself and saw the splatter drying on her cheeks.

“It’s not,” she reassured him quickly, and watched some of the tension ease from his shoulders as he acknowledged her words. Another awkward silence passed between them before she blurted out, “You’re an asshole. Who takes this long to say sorry?”

Takemura had chuckled, his face transforming into one of those soft looks that he reserved only for her. Fondness shone out of his eyes. He knew her well enough to know that meant she had accepted his apology. “A stubborn, foolish man. It is good to see you, Aoi-chan.”

She bit her lip, hesitating before opening her mouth and clamping it shut. That tell-tale heat was building beneath her eyes and, for just a moment, she resented him. For knowing her so well, for being one of the few people that could make her remember who she used to be.

“What is it?” Takemura was back on high alert, scanning her face for any sign of injury.

“Missed you,” was all she could manage before breaking down into tears. At this point in their relationship, she couldn’t even bother to feel embarrassed. She saw him reach his fingers to the video, as if he could touch her through the screen. “It’s been - hard.”

He had always been her anchor to reality, and she felt unmoored.

“Come home,” he replied, his voice rough. She knew him well enough to know that was as emotional as he would get without the involvement of a jug of sake. “Even when we fight, you do not need to run away from home like this,” he scolded her gently.

“‘Kay,” she mumbled between sniffs.

And that had been that.

******

_Good morning, this is Erica from NHK News._

_Some residents in North Takamatsu reported strange flood lights emitting from the Arasaka building last night, disturbing their sleep._

_Arasaka Corporation has resolved the issue, and wishes to extend an apology to any affected residents, claiming that it will not happen again._

******

Takemura groaned as he returned to consciousness. He had thought that the headache he had waking up from the drug was bad, but it could not hold a candle to the way his head pounded now. He had been moved: the room wasn’t the same one that he had fainted in, and he was now on his back on a mattress. Both of his arms were suspended in the air. His eyes followed the line of his arms to reveal that his wrists were handcuffed to the bedpost, and he pulled at his binds experimentally, the plastic of the cuff digging into his skin. He sighed loudly in annoyance and threw his head back against the cot before peering into the darkest corner of the room. “I grow tired of being restrained.”

“Do you remember everything?” Aoi asked instead, materializing out of the shadows. She held a bowl of water in her hands, and her eyes roved over him in a clinical manner before flicking back up to his face.

Takemura looked up, his eyes unfocused as he gazed at the stippled ceiling. “No, not everything.” His voice was unexpectedly hoarse. He swallowed thickly, his heart heavy with regret. It was as if he had just watched Valerie limp through the large, white doors of Yorinobu’s office. “Only some of 2077. But even then - it was more like experiencing the memories rather than truly remembering.”

“I’unno all the details of how this memory thing is supposed to work, so don’t expect any answers from me.” Aoi made a frustrated noise in the back of her throat and sat on the bed next to his chest. She set the bowl in her lap and dipped a cloth into the water before leaning over to clean his face. “Your nose bled,” she muttered at his bewildered expression, her eyebrows furrowed in concentration. “Don’t think too hard ‘bout it.”

“You could release me and I could do that myself,” Goro grumbled.

Her hand tensed almost imperceptibly before she recovered. “And miss this opportunity to watch you get all embarrassed at me playing nurse? No way.” Aoi sat back, looking down as she dipped the cloth in the water again. The water began to be tinged pink. “You gonna let me in on what you remember? You didn’t tell me much back then, and... well, everything is classified even above what I can access, now.”

Takemura moved his gaze to Aoi, considering. “And what did I tell you?”

“Nuh uh,” she protested, leaning back over to continue wiping down his face. “That’s not how this works. You’re the one strung up, not me. Answer my question first.”

Takemura fell silent. The only sounds were the rustling of the cloth on his face and the minute squeaks of the cheap mattress springs whenever Aoi adjusted her weight. She seemed to have gained a surprising amount of patience as she waited for him to answer, only continuing to rub the mix of fresh and dried blood out of his beard. An inexplicable sense of protectiveness overtook him as he watched her gently handle him. He frowned at her, trying to gauge how much was safe to tell her. “The less you know, the better for your safety. If it has been classified, I do not want to put you in danger.”

Aoi blinked at him in surprise before a bemused smile crossed her face, and she chuckled in disbelief. “You’re the one strung up and you’re worried about my safety? It really is you, isn’t it?” Wonderment tinged her voice as she muttered to herself, barely audible to his ears. She raised her voice to normal speaking levels. “We’re not fresh-faced kids anymore, I’m not gonna’ go running off half-cocked the moment you tell me something that upsets me.”

“Yorinobu killed Arasaka-sama.”

It was like all of the air had been sucked out of the room at those three words. Aoi sat back and stared at him, her eyes wide. Her hands clenched into fists, the wet cloth balled up in her hand, and she looked away from him. “Fuck. I had always suspected, but... what an idiot. What an impulsive, idealistic idiot. I always -” She took a deep, shuddering breath and nodded. Her face became strangely expressionless. “Right. Okay. What else?”

Goro eyed her suspiciously for a moment before continuing. “I remember a woman - her name is Valerie. She had witnessed the murder. After Yorinobu had turned on me and claimed I had murdered Arasaka-sama, she helped clear my name. I... cared about her,” he finished lamely. He was not about to wax poetic in front of Aoi, of all people. “But she was very ill. I do not know what happened to her. Now - your turn. What did I tell you?”

Raising a hand to nervously push some hair behind her ear, Aoi shifted uncomfortably. She threw the cloth in the bowl and set it on the ground, pointedly looking away from him. “When you called me in ‘77, I was deep undercover in South Africa. ‘Course, when Arasaka Saburo dies, you hear about it no matter where you are or what you’re doing. Honestly thought you must’ve been dead too. Imagine my surprise when I see you’ve left a message on my phone saying you weren’t dead. I did as you asked,” she confirmed lowly, her eyes flicking over to him before she continued staring at the other side of the room, “all the contingency plans you’d planned in case something went to shit.” She ran a hand through her hair and sighed. “After that it was radio silence. I figured after Arasaka-sama came back from the dead you’d pop up somewhere, but you wouldn’t answer my calls or texts. Even dropped in on your secret apartment in Tokyo one time only to surprise the hell out of the new folks. It was like you disappeared off the face of the planet. Then like I said, in ‘81 you sent me some cryptic as hell message saying you were in grave danger, sent a bunch of classified info over to me.”

He watched her shift uncomfortably when she mentioned the data. “What kind of information?” Takemura asked quietly, suspicious of her shiftiness. When she fidgeted again, he knew she was hiding something from him. “Aoi-chan...”

“None of it made sense. About Mikoshi, about the Relic, and... about a woman named Takemura Valerie,” Aoi muttered the last part quickly, digging into her pockets for a smoke. She brought the cigarette to her lips and lit it, taking a long drag. “Medical files from some experimental surgery that I can’t make heads or tails of, a registered Japanese marriage certificate, some residential papers. Congrats, by the way. Still pissed I wasn’t invited to the wedding.” Her leg started to bounce as she teemed with nervousness.

The impact of her words hit like a freight train. “Takemura... Valerie?” He could hear blood rushing through his ears and he tried to sit up, cursing when the handcuffs kept him in place. “She is alive? The surgery worked? Where is she?”

Aoi grimaced, taking another long drag of her cigarette. “That's the problem. I dunno. She’s the one I spent all that time looking for. You called her - precious. Your Night City thief. Figured if she was brave enough to marry you, she must be something... but there's nothing about her anywhere, inside Japan or out.”

He felt his insides twist at her words. “You could not find her? Does that mean - is she really in Mikoshi? She was dying, but Hanako-sama promised to heal her. She should not be there.”

Aoi’s jaw tensed at hearing Hanako’s name before she shook her head in the negative. “If she’s in Mikoshi, she’s incognito. No,” Aoi spoke slowly and speculatively, “I asked around and looked myself. She’s not there, if she ever was. But when I mentioned your name, no one would talk. Even if I asked nicely. Or not so nicely. It was like you never existed, either.”

“Did you talk to Anders Hellman? He was the one the most interested in her.”

“Mhm,” she confirmed. “Dead end. Even went to Night City - awful, miserable place, by the way. None of her known associates had seen her since you stole her away in ‘77.” 

Goro frowned at her, apprehension rising within him. “You did not -“

“Don’t start. I was very, very nice.” Aoi scowled, frowning down at her cigarette that had burned down to the filter. She flicked it to a corner of the room. “No point in pissing off your wife’s friends now, is there? Wouldn’t want the fallout of that particular shit storm to fall on your pretty little head.”

Wife. The word sounded foreign to Takemura’s ears. He supposed he should be pleased, knowing that he and Valerie had survived long enough to tie themselves together in such a permanent way. But he could only feel dread. Aoi had the nearly unlimited resources of a black ops agent, but even she could not find Valerie. He had no leads; he had no idea where she could be, or if she was even alive. “What do we do now? Valerie either has been hiding, on the run, or...” he trailed off, unable to say the word. He cleared his throat. “She will have the answers we seek. We must find her.”

“Well,” Aoi’s leg continued to bounce nervously, causing the bed to shake slightly with the movement. “I’ve got an idea, but you might not like it. Actually, I know you wont like it.”

“I will do anything to find her.”

“Anything?” Aoi looked at him, surprise lacing her features as she processed his emphasis on the word. She examined his serious expression. “Your version, or mine?”

Takemura focused on Aoi’s wide eyes, boring into them with his own. “Yours.”

Aoi let out an exhale, and Takemura couldn’t tell if she was annoyed or relieved. “Well, that changes things. I was planning on having to waste more time playing nice, but with this...” Aoi grinned ferociously, materializing a throwing knife out from her sleeve. Goro stared at her, anxiety crawling through his insides as she inched closer.

Aoi leaned over and decisively cut through his bindings, scooting back on the bed to give him room to move. Goro slowly sat up and rubbed his sore wrists, stretching them out as he looked at her questioningly.

“Let’s raise hell,” she said lowly, a smirk gracing her lips. “We’re getting your girl back.”

*****

Instead of telling him the plan immediately, Aoi had somehow convinced him to let her into his apartment and find her something to eat. She claimed that dragging him around town (“You’re way heavier than you look, Goro-kun!”) was exhausting, and he relented with the energy of a run-down older sibling.

“You’re going to use all of your vacation,” Aoi declared as she leaned against his kitchen counter, shoving convenience store onigiri into her mouth, open wrappers spread out in front of her like fallen soldiers. “You’ll say your parents have suddenly got sick, and you need to fulfill your filial duties as the eldest son to get their affairs in order - oh, and I’ll send you something in the morning, password will be the phrase I told you earlier, it’ll be all the info I got on your parents. Anyways, this’ll be the perfect cover to get out from under Arasaka’s thumb, at least for a little while.”

Goro set his own onigiri down, staring blankly at his overly presumptuous former-maybe-current friend. This was not the direction he was expecting to go. “I am not the eldest son.”

Aoi paused for a moment, taken aback, before she cursed colorfully in French under her breath. She threw her last onigiri onto the countertop in frustration. “Have you really not - Jirou ‘nii-san died in ‘67, Goro-kun. Only you, Hotaru-chan, and Rokuro are left.”

Another loss. He supposed he should be used to the tragedies that befell all of the sons of his family. Perhaps even grateful that it was only Jirou, and that Hotaru and Rokuro were at least alive. He thought of his older brother’s easy smile and even temper. A numbness overtook him and he sat down roughly onto a barstool. “How?”

Her lips were like a gash across her face, and concern shone from her eyes. “Chiba-11 is no better than it was when we were young,” she answered carefully, her words slow and deliberate. “And Jirou ‘nii-san got himself into a situation. It was - it was a rough couple of days, but we handled it.”

“Handled it?” He echoed questioningly.

Her lips curled into a wicked smile, the severeness of her frown dissipating in the wake of her satisfaction. “Let’s just say I got real creative with my knife-work, and you found it in yourself to look the other way.” At his unspoken question, she shrugged. “‘Nii-san was always nice to me. Fed me any scraps he could when I was a clueless runaway. Never asked for any... favors. Leaves an impression. He didn’t deserve what he got in this life.”

“You said we met in ‘61...” he trailed off, frowning at her.

“We did. Just ‘cause we lived in the same shit-hole for a time and I knew your brother didn’t mean I knew you,” she admonished his obvious suspicion, before a faraway look settled onto her face. “Although, I did suspect heavily when I met you. No one really names their kids as numbers anymore.” She glanced over to his face and sighed. He marshaled his face back into what he hoped was a convincing neutral. “Anyways, ‘nii-san - he’s not - you’re the eldest, now. So you get all of the responsibility.”

And that brought his thoughts back around to his parents, which somehow seemed easier than thinking about his older brother’s death. Anger was always easier than grief, for him. A black rage settled into his chest, and he clenched his fingers. He had no desire to see them again, not after what they had done to all of them. “I have not talked to my parents in nearly thirty years.”

“Wrong,” Aoi sang to him, elongating the word. “You reconciled with your parents in 2068. Because - well. Even bought a house for them with that fancy bodyguard income. They actually live around here, somewhere around Takamatsu.” Aoi rolled her eyes at his involuntary grimace.

“Even so, if I should think that I have not reconciled with them, how would they even know how to contact me?” Goro countered, taking an angry bite of his rice ball. The thought of facing his parents made his palms sweat. He fully chewed and swallowed his food before speaking again, taking the time to think. “And I can only take one week of vacation. If you have not found Valerie in the past two years, what will we be able to do in a week?”

“You’re dealin’ with a pro here, Goro-kun. Just trust me,” Aoi reassured him, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand as she finished her meal. Goro frowned at her and she rolled her eyes, meandering over the sink to wash her hands. “Ever so fastidious. Anyways, just trust me,” she called over the sound of rushing water. “I wont have to make up much. They’re really not doin’ so hot, Goro-kun. You got to remember, they’re in their nineties now. And I got a hunch that once you go outside your normal pattern, anyone watchin’ you in Arasaka is gonna take notice.”

“If I am being watched, it is a bad idea to bring the danger to my elderly parents,” he tried to reason. He had never gone outside the lines that Doctor Kinomoto had drawn for him around Takamatsu for fear of aggravating his condition, but also because he knew that Arasaka was monitoring him in case of a relapse of his (now known to be fake, he thought with some measure of anger) cyberpsychotic episodes.

Aoi sent him an unimpressed look. “We’re not in NUSA. Arasaka will not drop shock troopers on your elderly parents in the middle of Japan. Gods, imagine the fallout, the news reels, the payouts. If anyone would show up, it’d be just one or two to kill you on your lonesome, nice and easy.”

Goro leveled a glare at her, feeling mildly wounded at her words. He still had his pride. “It would take more than one or two people to kill me. Arasaka knows this; they have tried. And failed.”

“Not everyone is as ham-fisted as Yorinobu. And even you sleep sometimes,” she shrugged, shutting off the water. She shook out her hands, searching his small kitchen for a hand towel. “We need to see who follows you, who doesn’t follow you; that’ll be more telling than any intel I’ll be able to scrounge up.”

“I do not even know what I would say to my parents,” Goro finally glowered, running out of any reasonable objections.

A snort escaped Aoi as she wiped her hands on a towel she discovered hanging from the wall. “That’s fine.” She sent a sly smile over her shoulder. “That hasn’t changed in the past fifteen years, so you’ll be able to slip right in character.”

Goro shoved the rest of his rice ball in his mouth and scowled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have this idea that Takemura, even after all these years, is more comfortable with people that are straightforward and rough and tumble. He seemed way too comfortable with V (versus, for example, how Hanako just doesn’t get it). I think his Chiba-11 days may have influenced who he chose as friends more than he thinks.
> 
> I am really enjoying writing Aoi, and I hope you can appreciate her as more of her comes to light. Girl got layers. Her theme song is: イキツクシ by DADARAY.


	7. tokyo nights

Takemura felt a strange sense of déjà vu as he found himself sprawled on his back again, sake bottle at his side. Aoi sat precariously on the balcony railing, her cybernetic eyes glowing like beacons as she watched him speculatively in the dark. The crepuscular sky was dotted with almost invisible stars that blinked softly above the ever-lit lights of the city. “You’re drinking,” she noted with a curiously flat tone.

An incredulous scoff escaped his lips. He held up his hand and began to count off his grievances. “You just revealed that everything I thought I knew about the past twenty years are a lie, my brother is dead, and I failed at the one job I was supposed to do. To make it worse, I forgot that I fell in love with and married a foreigner who tried to steal from my employer and who I initially thought killed him.” He became somber at his last thought, pouring sake into his mouth before he continued. “...To top it off, I have no idea if my wife is even still alive. I think I am entitled a drink, so you can fuck right off!”

It was either a testament to her nerves or her familiarity with him that Aoi did not even blink an eye at his outburst. She continued as if he hadn't just snapped at her. “It’s just... You never drank, though. Not after... you just, you didn’t,” Aoi waved a hand, seemingly unable to complete her sentences. If Goro had bothered to look over to her, he would’ve seen her concerned, pinched expression and the sadness in her eyes. 

“Whatever happened, it does not matter, does it?” He realized how petulant he was being, but the booze was loosening him up in ways that brought out the worst in him. “If I cannot remember it, none of those memories shape who I am. I am stuck as whoever I was in my thirties, and that man happens to drink.”

Aoi sighed noisily, a hand coming up to massage the bridge of her nose. “Here comes the philosopher,” she grumbled to herself. Goro ignored her.

“Is the man the memories, or are the memories the man?” He stared into the inky abyss of space above, lost in his own thoughts. Flashes of his relived memories of Night City lit up his mind, but they felt abstract, as if they were lived by someone else. “I do not think I will ever be who you remember.” He turned the cup slowly within his hand, examining the sakura print on its sides before he poured more sake into his mouth. At least, that was his intention, but gravity didn’t work in his favor and he splashed half of it on his face and beard. He sputtered and sat up. Aoi watched him silence as he muttered exasperatedly and flicked droplets of sake from his fingers and brushed at the front of his shirt. She slipped off of the railing as he adjusted his seat to be against the wall and sat right next to him, her side brushing against his as she snatched up the sake bottle from the ground and necked it. He turned his head just enough to frown at her. “That is unsanitary.”

“Shut up,” she responded without any heat, automatically as if she'd said the like to him innumerable times. Her face was downcast as she examined the label, and she began to tear at the damp paper. “I’m gonna tell you a story about us, ‘cause I want you to understand exactly who we are to each other and why I’m so over you pulling this sort of shit.” 

“And what sort of shit are you referring to?” He responded dryly, continuing to examine her kaleidoscope of expressions.

It was her turn to ignore him. Words started to tumble out of her mouth like a stream of consciousness. “Year was 2071. We weren’t talking to each other then ‘cause you’d gotten a stick up your ass about me joining black ops. I didn’t know this then, but even though you were pissed, you kept tabs on me. My handler had a soft spot for you,” she said with a wry tone, sending a glance his way. “So you knew about this particular op, even though you shouldn’t have because what’s the point of a chain of command if you can come in and break it with a smile? But, anyways, the op had all the normal parameters, a simple honey pot run. Get close, get intel, get out. But there was no official extraction plan in case something went sideways and something about the mission params must’ve bothered you, ‘cause you went to Yorinobu and begged him to pull some strings to get me out. You needed an invested third party to keep up appearances, and you knew about - well, you knew he’d take the bait, but you didn’t let him know you knew he would and you left yourself open to owing a favor from someone you deeply disliked to keep me safe.” Aoi took another swig of the sake and settled the bottle in the space between their thighs. He felt the pressure of the glass against his muscles as she nestled it between him, and he glanced down at the sensation. The white paper of the label she tore at had crumbled into pieces on her lap, some of it scattering across the balcony from the light breeze. “It was a bit unusual to get pulled off an op so late in the game, but it wasn’t unheard of, so I thought nothing of it. Then I heard through the grapevine that the agent that got sent ended up dead. It had been a trap from the start, the intel had been bad. She was sent back in parts.” Aoi reached over and grabbed one of his hands. Her fingers were cold from the night air, and he clasped them tightly as she rubbed her thumb reverently over his cybernetics. “That’s the kind of man you are, Goro-kun. You’d make a deal with the devil without a thought for yourself to keep me safe. And I know for a fact that if you needed to make the same decision in ‘61, you would’ve done the exact same thing, because I know you. So don’t start this bullshit about you not being the same guy.”

Goro couldn't handle the almost religious fervor in her face and leaned over to pull up the bottle with his free hand, grimacing at the lipstick staining the glass. He pointed the offending coloring at her in accusation. “You did that on purpose.”

“Maybe,” she replied cheekily, a knowing look in her eyes as she squeezed his hand once before releasing it. “You’re an annoying drunk.”

“Hmph,” he grunted, setting the bottle down in defeat. His head lolled a little bit against the wall as he looked down at her upturned face. “I assume that I was not the one who told you I did that.”

“You, taking credit for something? No. Yorinobu could be petty when he wished to be,” she said almost too evenly, her face blank for a moment before she relaxed. Goro narrowed his eyes at her, but she continued to speak. “Don’t get me wrong, I was very, very pissed off when I found out and I gave you a piece of my mind for treating me like some green recruit. I uh... compelled you to make the proper apologies.” She sent a sly grin his way, leaning her head back against the wall as she bumped his shoulder with her own. He had no idea what she meant, but he had a feeling it was suitably unpleasant. “But anyways, I’m not sayin’ you haven’t changed at all in those twenty years. You got a little more world-worn, a little more serious, and obviously more susceptible to the wiles of women young enough to be your daughter.”

That got his hackles raised. “You do her a disservice to describe her that way.”

Aoi waved a hand at him dismissively. “It's nothing to be ashamed of -“

“Stop,” Goro interrupted, his voice hard and unyielding. He stared at her without blinking until she broke his gaze, looking back down at the sake bottle with something like longing. “Valerie is one of the best netrunners I worked with in the past thirty years. She is intelligent and capable. If she had been born into better circumstances she would not have needed to languish in Night City, but it was all she knew and the world does not make it easy to claw out of poverty even if you are extraordinary. Both you and I know that very well. Despite that, do you know what is most remarkable about her?” He didn’t wait for Aoi to respond to his rhetorical question. “Her empathy. She had lived on the streets her entire life, longer than either of us had, but she could never let anyone around her suffer. She is not ignorant or thinks that the world is rosy, but she refused to let the world destroy her.” He looked back up at the city skyline, unable to look at Aoi as he made his confession. “When I am with her, I want to be a better man.”

Aoi made a show of gagging, and then snatched the bottle up from the ground and took a couple of large gulps. She grimaced, a displeased sound hissing out of her when the burn of the alcohol finally caught up with her. The glass hit the ground with a loud clack. “I can’t believe you actually went and fell in love.”

“It started as admiration,” he admitted lowly. “And then - it became something else entirely.”

She scooted even closer to him, their bodies fused at the sides as she wrapped both her arms around his one, settling her head on his shoulder. He felt the brush of her hair on his cheek and along his jaw. Inexplicably, he had no desire to push her away. “Love is not for people like us, Goro-kun,” she declared with the absolute certainty of someone who loved herself out of love. She seemed to be gazing somewhere out in the far distance, somewhere past reality. “To love something is the greatest signal for the universe to have it taken away.”

He turned his head to get a better look at her. His cheek pressed against her forehead and he could barely see the tip of her nose, but he could sense her melancholy. Her sadness tore at his heart. He wondered if the man he used to be was still inside of him, somewhere, mourning for her. “What do you call this, then?” The urge to kiss her was all encompassing, and he followed his instincts, allowing himself a soft, chaste press to the delicate skin of her temple.

He felt her tense against him, her hands tightening on his arm, and then as she slowly relaxed every muscle. Her voice was soft and almost inaudible, and filled with immeasurable hurt. “Something the universe took away.”

Aoi quickly untangled herself from him and stood up abruptly at her words. Her mouth was set in a grimace, and he suddenly realized that she had said more than she had meant to say. She took a deep breath and sent him a crooked smile that barely masked the pain in her eyes. “Right. I gotta jet to Tokyo. You sit here and keep moping if you’d like.”

“Aoi-chan...” He moved to stand up, but she shook her head and motioned for him to stay still before stomping into his apartment. When the door to his balcony slammed closed, he pulled himself up to standing and leaned against the railing. After a couple of minutes, he watched the tiny dot of her form making its way down the sidewalk until she disappeared from view.

Takemura turned to consider the sake left on the ground. He moved to pick it up and then went back into his apartment, walking up to the sink and upturning the bottle.

He watched dispassionately as the liquid swirled down the drain.

*****

War made fast friends of anyone, but having someone save your life accelerated the whole process. When they weren’t fulfilling their special forces duties by playing war, they would find themselves together during leave looking for something to distract their guilty consciences. He would always get that level of drunk that was dangerous, inhibitions lowered but still in control of some level of his faculties, spouting off pseudo-psychological bullshit that sounded wise and thoughtful at night but never truly made any sense in the morning. Maybe what he said that particular night was just more of that kind of drunken nonsense, but that conversation had stuck with her. Aoi couldn’t even remember why they had gone so hard - maybe Goro had tried to talk to his parents again, maybe she had another asshole think he owned her because he stuck his dick in her a couple of times, or maybe they had just had enough of killing. Either way, the end of the night saw them both almost out of their minds.

The bars they visited were a blur except for their final stop, a seedy club that was infamous for never refusing service no matter how drunk someone appeared. The speakers thumped some forgettable computer-generated trash pop that was popular at the time, rendering all conversation near the dance floor impossible. After pantomiming their drink orders to the bartender, they carried their prizes to the quietest corner in the room. Unfortunately, it was already occupied, but with a quick glare from Takemura, her uncanny ability to emulate that level of crazy that sent people running to the hills, and their obvious Arasaka hardware, they found themselves the proud owners of a sticky table with even stickier seats.

“We are like black holes,” Goro had groaned as he collapsed into the booth and tilted his head back until it rested against the wall, blinking rapidly to try to stop the room from spinning. The bass of the club thrummed through her bones and she wanted to die. She army-crawled on the seat until she was next to him, pushing his legs off of the cushions to make room for herself, and cradled her head in her hands as she fought against the urge to throw up from the combination of ice and booze that rushed through her veins. He slumped onto the table, head safely nestled in the crook of his arm as he peered at her. “All we do is ruin ourselves and everything around us, Kudo. We are perfect for each other.”

“Shut up,” she had moaned. She rubbed her tongue against her teeth, her mouth feeling simultaneously too wet and too dry at the same time. She couldn’t feel her gums or her cheeks. Her shiny fuck-me dress was riding up her thighs and she was pretty convinced that she was flashing the whole place, but she couldn’t manage to scrounge up a single iota of care to fix it. “I can’t handle you when you’re like this.”

He had moved so fast, or most likely she was just so messed up that any movement registered as a surprise, that she squeaked when he pulled her right hand from her face. He crushed her bicep between his thick fingers and his black eyes stared at her one exposed eye with such an intensity that warning bells rang in her head. “We should not hurt ourselves like this. You do not need to do this to yourself. Aoi..!” The vice of his fingers tightened further. “I love you, Aoi.”

“What the fuck, Takemura! Take it back,” she had whined, smacking his hand with her still-free left hand. Her stomach wrapped itself into knots. Typical, for their friendship to get ruined by something as mundane as feelings. She tried to wrench her arm away from him, but he held fast. “Let go. You’re drunk.”

“I will not. I am serious,” he insisted with the sort of lofty solemnity that only a drunk Takemura could achieve. “I do love you. You are not my sister by blood, but you are more of a sister than my real one. I will always want to protect you, even from yourself.”

An immense sense of relief crashed onto her so quickly that she laughed, raucous and wild... and immediately threw up into her glass and all over the table.

Goro had jumped into the air like a shocked cat, and they were promptly kicked out of the club. They had tried to find the train but had failed miserably, and stumbled into the nearest capsule hotel. He practically threw her into the pod, halfway falling into the unit with her. He had stood up to leave and swayed dangerously before giving up and crawling in after her, stealing the pillow from her and pressing his face into it. They were crushed together, a tangle of limbs as they fought for space, and she had never felt safer. She had grabbed his wrist and squeezed it until he sluggishly turned to look at her. “Love you too,” she had slurred, peering at him with half-lidded eyes, and he grimaced at the bouquet of stale vomit and booze that was her breath. “Protect you... til’ I’m dead...”

The memories lingered as she opened her eyes and found herself back in 2083, awoken by the sound of the computer announcing the beginning of their descent into Tokyo. She sat up and glanced out the window at the bright, writhing city below, grimacing as she saw her reflection staring back at her. She pulled out a compact mirror from her travel bag and fixed her hair and makeup, removing the sleep from her eyes. As she touched up her lipstick, she quirked a smile at the memory. She and Goro had woke up the next morning and fought through their massive hangovers to race back to base before roll call. They had failed, and she could still remember the reaming they had both received for missing curfew. And the laps. Gods, the laps. They had never talked about that night in so many words, but it had changed both of them. He stopped drinking cold turkey. She slowly stopped trying to sample every new drug in town until cigarettes were her only vice. She was pretty sure if she told herself in her thirties that she would still be trailing after Takemura and cleaning up his messes twenty-plus years later... well, she wouldn’t have really been that surprised. They always circled around each other, pushing and pulling like some kind of parody of a symbiotic relationship.

At least, before he went and ruined everything by falling in love with a girl who was younger than her first pair of combat boots.

But she didn’t have time to mourn. She had received her orders, so despite being tired and emotionally exhausted by dealing with Goro, she had sucked it up and got on this plane to ferry her back to the main island. She had managed to take a shower so that she looked somewhat presentable, clad in gold and white like some kind of discount Hanako. It always pleased him when she emulated her style, and she needed all the ammunition she could grab with her desperate hands. She gazed at her image, hoping it was enough, before snapping the mirror shut.

*****

Her uncomfortable golden heels clicked loudly on the marble floors leading to Arasaka’s office, echoing through the empty corridor as she approached the secretary’s desk. When she passed the threshold to enter the antechamber, the woman’s eyes flashed and she rose, smiling pleasantly at Aoi.

“Good morning, Kudo-san.” The gold-plated secretary bowed to her. A glimmer of distaste bubbled up on the secretary’s face as she watched Aoi lean on the desk before she wrestled her expression back into a welcoming smile. “How may I help you?”

Aoi wondered what profile the secretary scanned when she walked into the room. Nothing official marked her as being part of black ops, and her Arasaka employee information changed almost daily to keep her as anonymous as possible. In the end, whatever the woman saw didn’t matter. She would most likely be replaced soon anyways, like all the others. “He in?” Aoi’s eyes bored into the secretary’s, who looked down nervously at her intensity.

“Ah - yes. However, I don’t see that you have an appointment today -”

“Let him know I’m here,” Aoi interrupted, her tone brooking no argument. The secretary hesitated for a moment, and Aoi’s eyes narrowed. “Now.”

“Y-yes, Kudo-san. One moment please.” The secretary’s eyes glowed red once more, and a moment passed before she began to speak. “I am sorry to interrupt you, shachō-sama, but a woman named Kudo Aoi has requested an audience with you. May I send her in?” There was another pause before she spoke again. “Yes, shachō-sama. I will do so immediately.” Her eyes returned back to black, and she refocused her attention on Aoi. “Kudo-san, he will see you now.”

Aoi waved at the secretary to remain where she was when she moved to lead her to the doors. “Don’t bother.”

Aoi took a deep breath and centered herself before pushing the doors open. She stepped into the room and closed the doors behind her before standing at attention. The room opened into a large, golden office with floor to ceiling bay windows and a giant, multi-level marble table. Yorinobu sat at the other side of the table, partially hidden by the different levels as he read from a tablet. His glasses were perched on the bridge on his nose as usual, but he was wearing a kimono instead of his usual western-style dress shirt and pants. Her heart skipped a beat. Even after nearly five years, just for a split second, she would always forget that it wasn’t really him. “Kudo-san,” he drawled, not lifting his eyes up to acknowledge her. “Speak.”

The illusion would always break when he spoke. It was his voice, but it wasn’t the way he should speak. He should have spoken to her softly and carefully, as if she was a treasure. As if she meant something more to him than a tool for domination.

“I’ve made contact and restored the first set of memories,” Kudo reported without preamble as she strode closer to the table. She stopped a respectable distance away, her hands folded in front of herself at attention. She stared ahead, squashing her emotions and focusing on the view of Tokyo before the sunrise through the windows.

Saburo finally lifted his head to look at her, setting the tablet down on his desk. He steepled his fingers as he leaned back in his chair, surprise briefly crossing his face before it returned to its abnormal stillness. “Good news, for once.” She remained stoic in the face of his barb. “I hope he did not cause you any trouble.”

“None,” Kudo replied easily. “I am confident he will lead me to the target in time.”

“Good,” Saburo made a pleased noise in his throat. He seemed to stare through her, as if measuring her worth. “We move closer to our goals. Your previous association with Takemura will not cloud your judgement.”

He said it like it was a fact, but past experience told her to reinforce with affirmation. “No, Arasaka-sama.” She clasped her hands behind her, straightening her posture even further. “Arasaka Corporation always comes first.”

“Good, good.” Saburo almost smiled, and she sunk her fingernails into her palms. “Remember, after you acquire the asset, you are free to deal with Takemura as you see fit. I no longer have any use for him.” He eyed Aoi for a moment before picking up his tablet again. “Is that all?” When she did not immediately respond, he waved her off dismissively. “You may go.”

“Arasaka-sama,” Kudo burst out suddenly, biting the inside of her lip when she realized she spoke louder than she expected. “Arasaka-sama,” she said again with a much more level voice, “Is it not possible for Takemura-san to rejoin the special forces? He is still a good soldier, and still very loyal to Arasaka.”

Saburo considered her without speaking long enough that Aoi felt herself begin to sweat. His stolen, unfathomable black eyes seemed to stare into her soul. “After all that has happened, he is fortunate to be alive,” Saburo said slowly and evenly, as if speaking to a child. She was unable to hide her flinch at his tone. “Do not push your luck, Kudo-san. You do not know the whole story, so it is understandable - but remember why you are here. Remember your place.”

“Yes, Arasaka-sama. Thank you, Arasaka-sama.” Kudo bowed low, and slowly rose back up, straightening herself before turning on her heel and moving to leave. When she grasped the handle of the door, the sound of his voice froze her.

“Kudo-san.”

Kudo gripped the handle tightly, taking in a shallow breath before turning her body to look back at her master. His eyes bored into hers and she felt paralyzed as if she had been hacked.

“Do not disappoint me.”

The way he said those words struck fear straight into her heart, and Aoi fled his office without another word. She rushed past his secretary and into the corridor, finding the nearest trash can and vomiting into it. After taking in a deep gulp of air, her stomach churned violently and she vomited again, but her stomach was empty and only bile emerged. Blood smeared on the chrome surface of the trash can and she pulled her hands up and stared at her palm. Four half-moon shaped gouges oozed blood on her left hand, and she laughed hysterically at the sight. Even after thirty years of facing near-death situations and launching headlong into firefights with no fear, one single harsh glance from Arasaka Saburo would turn her into a hyperventilating mess.

As much as she wanted to collapse onto the floor and curse her circumstances, there was too much at stake for her to fail. She steeled herself as she wiped her mouth with the back of her bleeding hand. There was no going back now.


	8. letters

Goro could not remember the last time he allowed himself to be so loose. Every muscle in his body was relaxed, without a single neuron in his brain preparing itself for a surprise drop-in through a window or a shot through the door. He sank into the cheap pleather of the couch in Valerie’s Night City apartment, lounging with his arms splayed across the headrest like some sort of indolent god. Valerie sat half-naked on the floor near his bare feet, digging into a backpack and pulling out various sundries with a vicious sort of energy. Piles of miscellaneous items began to accumulate around her and his heart squeezed. She looked so real and so close, but when he tried to reach out and touch her he was disappointed to find that that he was unable to control his body.

A dream, or a re-enactment of a memory; Goro wasn’t sure which.

Valerie must have said something, because he started to respond to a query he hadn’t realized had been asked. “I will not dump you into a tub of ice,” he intoned with a sort of incredulous finality. His words were also out of his control. “One, you do not have a tub. And more importantly, that is how you get hypothermia. Do not forget the effort I spent to keep you alive.”

He examined scene in front of him, trying to find clues. Valerie’s apartment was as wild as she was, magazines strewn all over any available surface, buttressed by various trinkets and keepsakes that she swore all held intense personal meaning and was certainly not junk accumulated due to a small hoarding habit born from intense poverty. One of the aforementioned magazines had a date printed on the cover, but when he tried to focus, it fuzzed into being something completely illegible. 

Valerie pulled out a revolver from the pack and that just seemed like an affront to gun safety. Goro eyed the bag suspiciously, semi-convinced that it had to be some sort of pocket dimension with everything she fit into it. “I need to try to reach the Blackwall,” she began, making a triumphant sound as she found what she must have been looking for, a large set of cables used in net-running. “Last time I went, I got sent in by the Voodoo Boys, and they stuck me under ice so that I wouldn’t overheat and die. Seemed like a good precaution to keep around. So this is me trying to stay alive, thanks.”

“Your survival instincts are... what is the phrase? To die for?” Goro replied dryly. He reached out and placed a hand on her shoulder. She was warm under his fingertips, and he greedily memorized the softness of her skin under his calloused hands. “Valerie. Valerie, look at me. You do still have both kidneys, yes?”

“Ha, ha, you’re a goddamned riot,” she grumbled, smacking his hand away without looking up. “I wasn’t handing myself over to fuckin’ scavs! Not to say they weren’t giant assholes that almost killed me, but, honestly, everyone tries to kill me at least once, so why bother keeping grudges at this point.”

Goro winced. He remembered his own first meeting with Valerie and frowned, not liking that she had a point, but then blinked in bewilderment when Valerie sent a fond smile his way. He felt his heart clench, and he reflexively smiled back at her, never able to help himself around her. He decided to change back to the original topic. “Why do you need to go to Blackwall?” He placed his hand back on her shoulder, and she didn’t remove it this time. “You did not find what you looked for the first time?”

Goro was no netrunner, but it was impossible to not know about the Blackwall and the effort that NetWatch exerted to keep it up. It kept the rogue AIs separated from the rest of the net, and as such, was not something that you just walked up to and investigated haphazardly. He also knew that Valerie had somehow made contact with Alt Cunningham at some point, and he had no illusions about where that meeting actually took place.

Valerie paused in her cable wrangling and climbed onto him. He sat quietly as she made her journey, his hands pressing into the small of her back and her thigh, stabilizing her as she settled into his lap. She shifted against him and then laughed quietly to herself, sending him a wry smile at the way his body had reacted to her closeness, and he could only shrug nonchalantly. He grasped her chin and pulled her down into what he only meant to be a chaste peck. But instead, Valerie snaked her arms around his neck and kissed him with such deliberate precision that he felt like he was liable to burst into flames. After what only seemed like moments, he broke the kiss to catch his breath and only caught a glance of her dilated pupils before she dipped down to place her head against his chest, ear to his heart, and closed her eyes. She hummed in satisfaction at what she heard, the vibration of her throat dissipating through his skin. She would do that when she was nervous, he realized with a jolt, reassuring herself with the steadiness of his heart, with the reminder that he was still alive. He played with her unbound hair, threading her ebony locks between his fingers as he continued to wait for her to speak. His patience paid off, for after a moment she started to mumble into his bare chest, her breath hot against his skin. “I’ve been thinking about Soulkiller. I think - there’s a way to adjust it, make it so you don’t need to die or be dead for it to work. But I need the source code to be sure, and your friends at Arasaka definitely wont be handing it over to me.”

He supposed it was a testament to his faith in her netrunning skills that his immediate response was quiet contemplation. “But why Soulkiller? You should not need not use it.”

Valerie stiffened for a second, before she sighed, snuggling closer to him. “It’s... not for me.” She lifted herself up to stare into his eyes, her hand on his cheek. He admired the green of her irises and the determination than filled them. “I know this is a cheap shot but please trust me, Goro. I got my reasons but - I’m not ready to tell you yet.”

Goro fell silent, examining the earnestness that shone on her face. After a tense moment, he sighed, realizing this was a situation where she would move forward with or without him. “Where is the ice?”

Valerie smiled and opened her mouth, only for the sound of an alarm to escape.

Goro woke up from the dream with a gasp, his eyes flying open as he took in his surroundings. He glanced over to his right and deflated when he realized his bed was still empty. He was still in his Takamatsu apartment. It was still 2083. He shut off his alarm and sat up in bed, leaning against the headrest as he caught his breath. The dream had felt so real, but it hadn’t been a part of the memories that came back with the key that Aoi had provided. Had it actually happened? He tried to catch the remnants of the dream and commit it to memory, but all he could remember was her smile. It would have to do.

A shrill notification heralding the arrival of a message interrupted him as he brushed his teeth. The subject line read: Leave Request Approved. He dug into the thread and found an attachment with a message that sounded eerily like him, was signed by him, but was definitely not written by him, requesting his manager to allow him to take the week off to handle his parent’s affairs in recognition of their declining health.

He spat out the toothpaste, turning the faucet and watching the water clear the sink. Aoi wasted no time, he thought with some measure of annoyance. She seemed awfully eager to get him out of Arasaka proper. He ran a hand through his beard as he examined his face in the mirror, the unnatural nearly-translucent ice blue-grey of his eyes a sharp relief to his tanned skin and long, salt and pepper locks. His hands automatically pulled his hair back into its customary bun, setting it into place with a hair tie. He looked much different than the last time he saw his parents. He wondered if they would still recognize him and the man he had become.

Another ping distracted him from the mirror. Aoi had opened an encrypted channel and sent him a compressed, password-protected file. He opened it and read the README.

_Goro-kun,_

_There’s been a netrunner loose, trying to break into it and other sensitive data warehouses. You’re thinking - so what, bet there are idiots trying to get in all the time. You’d be right. Difference is, this time, this runner is getting awful close to succeeding and it’s making folks at the top nervous. You’re thinking now - okay, that is interesting and all, but what does that got to do with me? Well, my sources tell me that they’ve been able to narrow down the location of this runner to somewhere around Shimanto-cho, which, lucky for you, is where your parents are living. You sniff this runner out before they cause any more damage and I might be able to work that into something that gets you back into Arasaka’s good graces._

_But be careful. Whoever this runner is, they know their way around cybernetics. Fried a couple of our best already. Don’t be next._

_Kudo_

_P.S: Sent some other goodies. Airplane mode only! You know the drill._

He quirked a smile at the dated reference to how computers worked when they were young. Takemura wondered if the netrunner was truly causing problems or if Kudo was giving him a task to distract him from the emotional distress he was feeling over meeting his parents again. It would be something that someone who knew him well would do. He closed his eyes and rifled through his memories again, wanting to get a better handle on the black ops agent, but came out with nothing conclusive. He could only trust his gut that she meant him no harm.

There was no point in delaying. He took a deep breath and slowly disconnected himself, cybernetic by cybernetic part, from the Arasaka network. It left him feeling empty and shaky, and it felt frighteningly similar to the pain of withdrawals. Once he was completely offline, he carefully input the password. The files became accessible, and he decompressed them to reveal several directories worth of information. He first browsed through the intel Aoi had gathered on his parents. Thankfully, there was nothing surprising in those files except that he had apparently allocated funds to hire a live-in nurse and housekeeper almost five years ago. His timelines weren’t concrete, so he wasn’t sure if it was Kudo executing his contingency plans or if he had returned home after his travels to Night City and realized his parents had deteriorated, but regardless, the realization hit him like a blow. If he needed to take such measures, his parent’s health must have actually declined. Perhaps Aoi was not exaggerating the night before.

He opened the files on the netrunner and, after some light perusal, stood up suddenly to grab a bag, stuffing in only the essentials before he rushed out of his apartment to make the long journey to Nakamura Station.

*****

Winter had turned the Kagawa countryside barren, the trees bereft of their leaves and the people huddled inside of their homes to preserve warmth. Goro could hear the twinkle of chimes as they danced in the chilly wind. It was the only sound on this quiet street, and he himself stood in silence in front of a house.

To be more accurate, he stood in front of the gates of a small estate. His hands tightly gripped his bag as he stared up at the well-worn, twisted iron. He struggled to believe that his parents lived inside such a large house, that he had bought this place that he should be able to call home. But the house number embedded on the wall proved that he was at the right address.

Home was supposed to be a squalid apartment in the heart of Chiba-11, where his grandmother scolded him fiercely as she made dinner. He would sit as sullenly and defiantly as any directionless teenager in the middle of their small room, ignoring her words as he waited to eat. It was the same conversation every time, a conversation that only now he could recall with fondness instead of annoyance. His grandmother disapproved of the boys he associated with - to be frank, the gang he was a part of - and the thoughtless destruction that they would bring to the neighborhood. She had only wanted the best for him, he had realized later only with the passage of time; she had just lacked the means to reach him.

He missed her fiercely.

He broke out of his reverie and pushed the intercom, a cheerful jingle emanating from the machine until he heard the tell-tale click of someone answering on the other side. There was a silence for a moment before there was an excited squeal and the buzz of the gate unlocking. A woman’s soft voice came out of the speakers. “My son! Oh, my Goro, come in, come in.”

The gate unlocked with a click, and Goro pushed it open. Aoi’s files had said that when most of the youth had fled to cities like Kyoto or Tokyo, Goro had been able to find his parents a comfortable house in the countryside to live out the rest of their days. It was a respectable estate, an old and venerable home built even before his parents were born, designed with traditional architecture in mind. The front yard was obviously meticulously cared for despite the brown of the grasses. A single large pine tree had been bent and molded to look like a bird taking flight, and it vaguely reminded him of the Ritsurin gardens although it wasn’t nearly as large. This sort of care was beyond his parents; either the housekeeper was a one woman storm or there were additional workers that would have access to the yard.

Goro opened the door and found his mother standing in the foyer, her hands clasped in front of her. He quickly kicked off his shoes and put on the guest slippers before entering the house. His mother didn’t match the image that he held in his memories. Her face had more lines and wrinkles, her posture more hunched as she leaned against a cane. But she had the same smile for him that she always had, bright and sunny, and she held her arms out wide for him as she bullied him into a weak hug. “My beloved son,” she beamed, her voice a touch too loud as if she could not hear herself speak. “Welcome home. I have not seen you in so long, and I am so grateful that you found the time. I am glad that you look well.”

“Mother,” Goro acknowledged, suddenly feeling sixteen and freshly graduated from the academy as he briefly hugged her back. “Where is father?”

His mother waved her hand dismissively. “He’s in the living room, watching television and grumbling at the news. We’d best not disturb him. But, my son - this is such a pleasant surprise. What brings you here? How long are you staying?”

His response was interrupted by an exasperated, high-pitched voice that called out from the back of the house. “Obaa-san! I could get the door, you must eat lunch. You let in another man who look like your son?” The Japanese was stilted with a strong American accent, and he watched as a woman he didn’t recognize rounded the corner, wearing a colorful apron over a plain white dress and fussing with tea tray. She froze when she saw him, all of the blood draining from her face and her mouth gaping open momentarily in shock. “T-Takemura-san!” The woman looked around and quickly set the tray down on the nearest surface she could find, before bowing deeply. “You did not say you will visit! I am sorry the house is like this.”

Takemura looked around and found the house spotless. “You must be Shimabukuro-san, the nurse helping my parents. Thank you for your hard work.”

His mother gently touched his arm and made an exasperated sound. She looked up at him with disappointed, rheumy eyes. “How could you forget Hika-chan? You hired her! Your father put up such a fuss...”

Well, that answered his earlier question of who handled her employment. Goro pressed his lips together into a thin line, unable to think of a sufficient response that would not reveal to his mother that he was in the middle of uncovering an Arasaka conspiracy.

The woman came up from her bow and Goro took the time to examine her more closely. A strange metallic visor covered the upper half of her face, obscuring her eyes, nose, and forehead. It appeared to wrap around behind her ears and continue down to cover her neck much like his own cybernetics. Color had rushed back into her face, making the high points of her cheeks rosy and flushed. Her lips, painted a mournful black, twisted into a pained smile. “Obaa-san, it is okay. It has been years, and Takemura-san busy man. Yes, I am Shimabukuro Hikaru, but so formal! Please, call me Hikaru. I like American-style.”

Her voice had a tinny, almost artificial quality to it now that she was in front of him. It was hard to read her facial expressions but the pull of her lips and the stiffness of her shoulders made him think he made some kind of faux pas. It would not to do anger the person making his food for a week. “Hikaru-san. It is good to meet you again. And I apologize for not sending word ahead, that was inconsiderate of me.” He turned to his mother and said, “I am staying a week.”

Hikaru smiled ruefully, shaking her head. “No no, no problem, not needed. Just nice. Welcome home, Takemura-san!” She grabbed the tray and scurried off, most likely to the dining room. Takemura followed her escape with his eyes, his eyebrows furrowing at the flighty woman. There was something so familiar about the way she moved that he couldn’t put his finger on.

“Goro,” his mother began, and he turned to look down at his mother’s exasperatingly knowing smile. He held his tongue, resisting the urge to preemptively stop his mother’s meddling. It would only make things worse, and how was he to explain to his mother that he was already married to a woman he could barely remember? “Come, you can tell me why you’re visiting over lunch.”

He helped his mother hobble back into the dining room, where the housekeeper was finishing up setting the table. She bowed perfunctorily and left the room with a simple “enjoy your lunch!” and without making eye contact, and he aided his mother in her descent into a sitting position on the ground. He hesitated. “Should I retrieve father?”

His mother laughed. “Let’s not ruin a perfectly good lunch so early. Your father is on a diet and he gets very grumpy around this time.” Takemura let out a breath that he didn’t know he was holding. She waited for Takemura to sit down, declared a grateful “thank you for the meal,” and then dug into her food with a surprising amount of vigor.

It was a simple lunch of miso soup, tofu, and rice. “Thank you for the meal,” he said as he began to eat. He carefully slurped a spoonful of miso soup before blinking in confusion. He sat up and stared at the hallway that the housekeeper had darted into in shock.

“So, my son - nothing is wrong?” His mother’s voice interrupted his thoughts, and he focused back on her. “It is not like you to appear so suddenly.”

He ignored her barb, and repeated the line that Aoi had coached him to say. “I wished to check on father. You mentioned in your last letter that he was doing poorly.”

His mother only looked at him sadly, disbelief painted over her features. “As much as I wish to believe that to be the case - oh, my Goro. I am fairly certain you would not come home unless your father had passed, and even then I am not so sure.”

Goro blinked, her bluntness catching him by surprise. His mother had always been timid and unable to speak her mind, and her declaration was as strong of an objection that he would get from her. “I -”

Before his mother could answer, the housekeeper materialized as if summoned, looking somewhat harried and out of breath. Her apron had been replaced with a long white coat. “Obaa-san! I forgot, today is haircut day! We are almost late.” She rushed to his mother and helped her stand despite her mild protests. She hastily bowed to Takemura. “Sorry, so sorry. Please, continue lunch.”

He watched with mild amusement as Hikaru shuffled his mother, hand in hand, towards the entryway. Her voice drifted towards him, fading as they moved further out of the door. “Come, Obaa-san, you have talked all week about haircut. You will look so pretty! Takemura-san is here for full week, so no problem, can see later!”

The house fell into a near-silence when the door closed behind them, the only sound the muffled voices from the television in the other room. Without his mother’s presence, dead descended on him and strangled his lungs, leaving him nearly ragged for breath. He looked down at his hands and found them trembling, and he pushed his dishes away, appetite disappearing into nothing. He glanced over at the direction of the living room and shuddered. The longer he waited to greet his father, the worse it would be. He was a grown man and could handle meeting a geriatric! But he couldn’t get his legs to unfold. His mind instantly sent him back to when he was a boy, shivering in fear inside a cabinet, listening between silent sobs for the sound of heavy footsteps.

He didn’t need to do this now. What was another failed meeting with his father? Maybe he was being cowardly, not facing his childhood demons, but it was a risk that he was willing to take. He could use this time to get out of the house and look into the netrunner. If he was honest with himself, his eagerness was born out of a hope that this netrunner was directly connected to him and Valerie.

How could he not hold out some hope, when the netrunner used the handle “bakeneko”?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yep, Goro has daddy issues. Is anyone surprised, based on how much he idolizes Saburo?


End file.
